Here, a further comment is needed. I n the past, with the rule of Saint Benedict of N ursia, the sequestration of the monastic order succeeded the roaming of the wanderers of the apostate, with the Roman Church distinguishing between CONTEMPLATIVE and ACTIVE orders. Today, it would indeed seem that, for the CORELIGIONISTS of social networking, the same kind of line is being drawn between a few allegedly highly-skilled 'actives' and the anonymous mass of 'contemplatives', these Francisan friars riveted to their screens the way monks were once riveted to their breviaries, with our secular but interconnected societies once and for all sorting the sheep from the goats.
Here again, the (emotional) polar inertia that resul ts from instantaneity and synchronization tends to supplant domiciliary inertia and the geographic localization of a social body already in a state of advanced decay where mass individualism wreaks its havoc. For, the photosensitive inertia of the mass o f progress's contemplatives and the delocalization of their activities are nothing more than fatal signs of the disorientation in what Perec would call the mode d'emploi of their daily l i fe .
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
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