ABSTRACT
Humanity might commit spiritual suicide just as it might physically annihilate itself through a nuclear or ecological catastrophe. A mode of life could ensue which had no longer any cultural significance or value, a purely functioning enterprize that would transform society into a human machine. In regard to representation, it would mean that all higher symbolic meanings were lost. At present the new media constitute a daunting challenge for a modern World culture at every level. At a popular level they are leading to all the manifestations of a new illiteracy and non-numeracy evident among school-children and even university students. A new science of representation, attentive to current developments in culture, might glimpse possibilities for connection and integration in common trends within dispersed spheres. It is true that the older fetishistic, iconic and even some forgotten mimetic forms of representation are returning and assuming a new role in culture.
