"Burroughs, William S. - The Electronic Revolution" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs William S)

THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION
BY
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

1970 Expanded Media Editions
Published by Bresche Publikationen
Germany
(To my knowlege, no longer in print)
Text transcription By Flesh
01/16/92






FEEDBACK FROM WATERGATE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN

In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained one
of the mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was flesh we are
told. In the beginning of what exactly was this beginning word? In the
beginning of WRITTEN history. It is generally assumed that spoken word came
before the written word. I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came
after the written word. In the beginning was the word and the word was God
and the word was flesh ... human flesh ... In the beginning of WRITING.
Animals talk and convey information but they do not write. They cannot make
information available to future generations or to animals outside the range
of their communication system. This is the crucial distinction between men
and other animals. WRITING. Korzybski, who developed the concept of General
Semantics, the meaning of meaning, has pointed out this human distinction
and described man as 'the time binding animal'. He can make information to
other men over a length of time through writing. Animals talk. They dont
write. Now a wise old rat may know a lot about traps and poison but he cannot
write a text book on DEATH TRAPS IN YOUR WAREHOUSE for the Reader's Digest
with tactics for ganging up on digs and ferrets and taking care of wise guys
who stuff steel wool up our holes. It is doubtful if the spoke word would
have ever evolved beyond the animal stage without the written word. The
written word ist inferential in HUMAN speech. It would not occur to our wise
old rat to assemble the young rats and pass his knowledge along in an aural
tradition BECAUSE THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF TIME BINDING COULD NOT OCCUR WITHOUT
THE WRITTEN WORD. The written word is of course a symbol for something and
in the case of hieroglyphic language writing like Egyptian it may be a symbol
for itself that is a picture of what it represents. This is not true of an
alphabet language like English. The word leg has no pictorial resemblance to
a leg. It refers to the SPOKEN word leg. so we may forget that a written word
IS AN IMAGE and that written words are images in sequence that is to say
MOVING PICTURES. So any hieroglyphic sequence gives us an immediate working
definition for spoken words. Spoken words are verbal units that refer to this
pictorial sequence. And what then is the written word? My basis theory is