revelations

Today in my Theories of Media class, our professor, the esteemed W.J.T. Mitchell said the most important thing I have ever heard. In expounding, aimlessly, endlessly on the media as the extentions of our body, the shifting sensoria/um and its porous boundary with the world, he started listing common mechanical models of the brain: brain as switchboard, brain as archive, brain as supercomputer. and in his ruminations he struck gold:

the brain as photoshop.

He looked startled at his own greatness, his gold t. rex earring glinting. Here is it, the editor of Critical Inquiry at his finest. Not only is our brain filled with images, like photoshop, but! we also have the ability to -get ready for it- alter them in certain ways! So much so that the unreal can start to seem -hold on- realer than the real! I mean, who needs consciousness when we have the ability to store images- and if we really want to get fancy- change them?!

Needless to say, with insights like this, my note taking has become furious.