The Suburbs Dream Of Violence.

People, Particularly Over-moralistic Americans, Have Often Seen Me As A Pessimist And Humourless To Boot, Yet I Think I Have An Almost Maniacal Sense Of Humour. The Problem Is That It's Rather Deadpan.

It Was An Excess Of Fantasy That Killed The Old United States, The Whole Mickey Mouse And Marilyn Thing, The Most Brilliant Technologies Devoted To Trivia Like Instant Cameras And Space Spectaculars That Should Have Stayed In The Pages Of Science Fiction . . . Some Of The Last Presidents Of The U.s.a. Seemed To Have Been Recruited Straight From Disneyland.

During The 1960s, The Shanghai Of My Childhood Seemed A Portent Of The Media Cities Of The Future, Dominated By Advertising And Mass Circulation Newspapers And Swept By Unpredictable Violence.

The Endless Newsreel Clips Of Nuclear Explosions That We Saw On Tv In The 1960s (were) A Powerful Incitement To The Psychotic Imagination, Sanctioning *everything*.

The Functional Freedom That Anybody Can Buy A Gun And Go Out And Murder A Lot Of People At A Mcdonald's Is Prevalent, Yes. But Through The Effects Of Tv And Interactive Video Systems And So Forth, We'll Also Have The Freedom To Pretend To Be A Mass Murderer For The Evening. I've Seen Descriptions Of Advanced Tv Systems In Which A Simulation Of Reality Is Computer Controlledthe Tv Viewer Of The Future Will Wear A Special Helmet. You'll No Longer Be An External Spectator To fiction Created By Others, But An Active Participant In Your Own Fantasies/dramas.