An Archeology of a Computer Screen

Abstract

Part of a special section on technology and the representation of the human body. The writer discusses the genealogy of the computer screen and the relation between the screen and the viewer's body. Virtual reality, interactivity, and telepresence were made possible through the digital computer, but they were realized through a much older technology: the screen. Whereas computers have only become common in our culture during the last decade, the screen has been used for the representation of visual information for centuries, from Renaissance painting to 20th-century cinema.