The Screen Is Not a Window

A window transmits light that exists whether or not you look. A screen manufactures light because you look, and adjusts the manufacture to keep you looking. The two objects are shaped alike, and this resemblance is the most profitable optical illusion ever engineered.

The mills do not sell evil; that would be easy to refuse. They sell substitutes — awe with the resolution turned up and the cost removed, intimacy without presence, pilgrimage without walking, catharsis on demand at 1.5× speed. Each replica is almost the thing, and the almost is the trap, because a soul fed on almosts stays hungry in a way it can no longer diagnose.

The test I use now for any film, song, or feed: after it releases me, do I have more appetite for the real — for the actual mountain, the actual neighbor, the actual silence — or less? Art points out the window. The mill paints one on the wall, and dims the room so you can't tell.