The Eyes Have It

In The Diamond Age, Neil Stephenson uses the term “mediatron” for what we think of as screens/displays/pages that can be placed anywhere. The emerging technology described below is the first generation of the mediatron. Here’s a passage from The Diamond Age illustrating one of the possible effects being immersed in this type of visual environment could have on human interaction — given our hardwired susceptibility to visual stimuli. Sounds like it might be fun.

He opened a desk drawer and took out a roll of thick, glossy mediatronic paper bearing animated Christmas scenes: Santa sliding down the chimney, the ballistic reindeer, the three Zoroastrian sovereigns dismounting from their dromedaries in front of the stable. There was a lull while Hackworth and McGraw watched the little scenes; one of the hazards of living in a world filled with mediatrons was that conversations were always being interrupted in this way, and that explained why Atlantans tried to keep mediatronic commodities to a minimum. Go into a thete’s house, and every object had moving pictures on it, everyone sat around slackjawed, eyes jumping from the bawdy figures cavorting on the mediatronic toilet paper to the big-eyed elves playing tag in the bathroom mirror to….”