My student and friend Nam Hyun-Woo sent me this remarkable photograph today. I think it is a clear tribute to our age and to the impact of technology, of mechanical reproduction, on self and identity. We see here so bluntly the danger of narcissism, and the ontological mise-en-abyme that results from the increasing inexpensive and seductive technologies of images.
We also can derive some hints as to the ultimate dark consequences of spending our lives looking into screens as if our life depended on it. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, that will be true in a sense we never imagined possible. Let us use our imaginations now, while we still have them and have not outsourced them to more reliable technologies.
Emanuel Pastreich
June 5, 2013
