Whether passive or active as viewer, I must still cynically pretend, because I’m still dependent, because my real dependency here is not on the single show or few networks any
more than the hophead’s is on the Turkish florist or the Marseilles refiner. My real dependency is on the fantasies and the images that enable them, and thus on any technology that can make images fantastic. Make no mistake. We are dependent on image-technology; and the better the tech, the harder we’re hooked.
[David Foster Wallace, E unibus pluram (1993), p. 39]