Behind the screen, there is nothing. Not darkness, not fantasy, not even the flickering lights of consciousness aroused. And yet, within the screen, the case is quite the opposite -- here, within the delirium of technological living we encounter an intensified imaginary, new worlds of interactive possibility, in short, new opportunities for the falsification of being.

This provocation has strategic purpose, for the question of screen culture is less about the technological possibilities initiated by invention, and much more about the delirious seduction of a life screened-in. Here, amidst the growing participatory potential of interactivity, the icy prophecy of Marshall McLuhan's "cool technology" is brought to the cold light of the Lacanian mirror. For, as Lacan knew well, behind the mirror there is also nothing, which is why it becomes so urgent to invent a fantastic something to which technological effect can be attributed. The mirror, one might posit, is the first screen, the first "cool technology" -- the instance where the participatory performance of living first takes on its split dynamic between the "hot" social and cultural self and its "cool" other.

The screen, however, also does something that the mirror never could -- namely, it allows for its fantasy to be realized, and not only in potential. The very condition of screen-culture rests on a will-to-delirium implicit in the amplification of imaginative possibilities.

What follows is a series of three meditations on aspects of the screen as it relates to knowledge and technological living, three variations on a theme, or three delusions of technological grandeur. Respectively, these contemplations will proceed from paradox, to illusion and, finally, to hallucination as representative elements of a culture screened-in. [...]