Image technologies and traditional culture

The thesis explored here is that ‘image technologies’ prominent in today's communications technologies are acidic to traditional cultures. I parallel examples from the history of early modern science and its optical instrumentation with the rise of cinema and television and other audio‐visual technologies to show a similar history and effect. One dominant contemporary phenomenon which occurs through image technologies is the appearance of pluriculture, a unique mediation of the multi‐cultural. The challenge of pluriculture vis‐à‐vis the contemporary forms of reaction to the phenomenon is also examined.