Which town?

40

It was already the crossing to this other millennium.

But even before we all entered into it, Internet, the common fruit of information, cybernetics, space aeronautics, miniaturization and digitalization technologies, had already begun to disembark. The communication tool par excellence, virtually accessible to all, with which every knowledge and every information could be directly obtained by whoever wished to = from almost anywhere upon this earth, one could eventually gain access, with the aid of a simple portable device, to whomever one wished to anywhere else as to any wanted information on any subject. The science of persuasion and conversion, of exploiting each social being’s preferences and vulnerabilities, of manipulation, of attraction, of obsession = a new know-how was developing which generated its own specialists, experts and innovators. The empire of image – the law of desire, the right to entertainment and to the artifacts of a model existence made of ubiquitous and seductive clichés – would spread to the most isolated and protected areas of the earth. And along with its brands came the wrappings, the displays and dressings, the settings and the promises and, associating the utilitarian to the immediate pleasurable satisfaction, appeared a new secretion of humankind = plastic. Simultaneously the power of publicity had multiplied = its power to influence and impress, its power to brand, to create trends and fashions.

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