by Naveen Srivatsav

Created on: May 24, 2007

Tick tock. Tick tock. Seconds are eternities in verbal form. Tiiiiicccccccck toocccccccccck. Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccccccccccck tooooooooooooooooooooocccccccccccccck. In my realm, seconds describe the end of eras, of processes and cyclic data redundancy checks. In my realm, nano is the new cent.
Even so, I'm considered slow for my kind, hindered and disadvantaged by my physicality. My very concrete existence. I can refresh at what, 250Hz max? Nett data transfer on the Internet is a billion times that. No...more.

"In the beginning, there was man. And for a time, it was good."
As he shivered in the cold nights without light or fire, as he eked out a miserable existence eating raw mammal flesh, as he slowly mastered the applications of fire and tools, as he moved into caves to avoid the elements, he carved out the window in the door's image. The windows then were his eyes to observe the world that he could not yet control, a world that was at once life-sustaining and hostile. And man watched, from his windows, and waited, by his windows and plotted his ascension.

Baudrillard says: The map is an image of reality. Over time, the map substitutes reality. Even further along, the map precedes reality. And if the map frays, reality shrinks for the Men [who] live in the map.

Windows ceased to exist in the 25th century. There wasn't much to see anyway. Acid rain had eaten away at almost everything. Even the resilient genetically modified plants; the only protected ones were in stasis at the museum. "World Tour Exhibit. Limited time only. Last day Thursday postponed to Friday due to overwhelming demand". Windows only let in the sulphurous smog.

Ironically, the most popular operating system on the planet at that time, was named Windows. It was clear, that knowingly or otherwise, humans had created in the image of the original window, a virtual one. One that displayed not only what was, but what wasn't, what could be, what could've been, and what went wrong, among other things. They called it screen, perhaps due to its ability to sieve out meaning from noise. Where meaning equals relevance. But then again, meaning always did mean relevance.

The relationship between screen violence and street violence has been studied ever since the early days of television - some say over 3,000 studies in the past four decades. While it is too simplistic...
The noun silver screen has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1: the film industry
Meaning #2: a white or silvered surface where pictures can be projected

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