the Year-of-the-Depend technology catalog

The era describes itself in two lists, and the join between them is the whole argument. First the spectation infrastructure — the teleputers, disseminators, screens "so high-def you might as well be there," the promise that the image can replace the world. Then, tacked on with a semicolon as though it were just more spec sheet, the injuries: the carpal nerve, the migraine of too much screen-light, the fattened seat, the ruined lower back. The passive-viewer's body is the year's actual monument, catalogued right alongside the machines that produced it. "You might as well be there" is the sales pitch; the aching horizontal body is the fine print, and the culture lists both in one breath without noticing the sentence it has written about itself.