- as the mimetic reproduction of things.

Of course, some of their animals undoubtedly consisted of electronic circuitry fakes, too; he had of course never nosed into the matter, any more than they, his neighbours had pried into the real workings of his sheep. Nothing could be more impolite. To say, 'Is your sheep genuine?' would be worse breach of manners than to inquire whether a citizen's teeth, hair, or internal organs would test out authentic.(PKD)

The link between mimesis, primitivism and technological development: It is the task of the animal to register the rediscovery of the naturalness of the mimetic faculty in a technical age - confirming B's insight regarding the rebirth of the mimetic and mechanical reproduction. When the great E was credited with the invention of the 'talking machine' - and here we cannot easily bypass the obvious primitivism, the animism, built into the concept in the popular name of the apparatus from the start - first heard in 1877, his voice played back to him singing 'Mary had a little lamb,' he is reported as saying, 'I was never so taken aback in my life.' 'Taken aback' is a significant choice of words for this historic moment, a spontaneously fitting way of expressing (what A called) 'the shudder of mimesis' being taken back to childhood.(MT)

- as interference-free communication and exchange.

The myth of instantaneous communication, such as the telephone call to Mars: Occasional reports of possible extraterrestrial attempts to contact Earth always featured space aliens signalling in codes familiar to english-speaking peoples.(CM)

The Internet and early prophecies - along the lines of the global village.

Is live sound like speech (more than writing), in the relations of producer to listener/ writer to reader? It is the speaker who seemingly has control of any situation by maintaining those oppositions of subject/object. 'I' speaks and 'you' listen. To actively contest this in speech or writing or any form of cultural production becomes a significant oppositional strategy, perhaps expressed by the use of silence or inarticulacy. The centre (as colonising author) appropriates oppositional discourses and 'erases'.

No need to hear your voice when I can talk to you better than you can talk yourself. No need to hear your voice... Re-writing you I write myself anew.(bh)

Noise derived from a sheep has a certain lack of clarity, unlike good authoritative speech, a sheep breaks all the rules of articulacy that would claim to be clear; without pause, at the right speed, with appropriate rhythm and intonation, and so on.

When I heerd faethur sceech, and he and the ladder fale away, I knowed 'twas all ovvur; he must, thoft I, be kill'd in one of these here three ways - Ef he's gone to bottom, every lem es brock. - Ef ennything like life es left, he must be drown'd in the sump; and ef he shud catch'd up by the stage where we belong [ie. the stage where they stood to work, and which they had just left] the two holes must blow un into a thousand pieces. - Oh dear! Oh dear! I faeld down pon my knees, and all that I cud pray was - Oh, Nicky, pray for faethur.

Nicky kneeled down, but he dedn't pray, I reckon, for when the holes went off, he said - 'He's out of pain or he's in the sump swemming.'

My lighted candle was on my hatcap; - I catch'd hould ov the lift, slider'd away from flanch to flanch, and was down pon the stope like lightning.

The place was full of smok, and not a lem nor nothing human cud be seed. At laest up agenst the lift I seed faethur's head and shoulders.

The attle was to his brist, and hes face in a dismal shape; hes eyes was uppun, but cudn't speak. - O, help me, Nicky; help me, doey, to clear away the traed from faethur.

He's glazing, said Nicky, but he can't be alive, you know; twud kill a thowsand cats ef they'd ben there. - Oh, clear away quicker! quicker! Nicky.

"I believe I'm saved Jimmy, and I baent hurt much, I reckon, Jimmy."

...as deef as a haddick; but that and a few smale cuts es awl that hurt dun to un.

- as authentic reproduction; the means of production and conventions of reception.

JD argues that logical or scientific truth is rhetorical, existing as 'an effect of language that seeks to negate its status as language precisely in order to better its claim on the real. What is available is an endless stream of reproduction, a parody of origin as 'simulacra', with the real dissolving into an historical construct. JB goes as far as to say that signs and codes have replaced reality altogether and installed a reality effect.

One day a large parcel arrived for the Emperor, on which was written ÒNightingale.Ó But it was not a book; it was a little piece of mechanism, lying in a box; an artificial nightingale, which was intended to look like the living one: but was covered all over with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Three-and-thirty times he sang one and the same tune, yet he was not weary. And the artist wrote five-and-twenty volumes about the artificial bird, with the longest and most difficult words that are to be found in the Chinese language. Then something sprang Òsur-r-r -r.Ó ÒMusic, music!Ó cried the Emperor... But the bird was silent: there was no one there to wind him up, and he could not sing without.(HCA)

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