Total Media "To hear more and to see more is to shorten one's life." - Luis de Gongora As long as the extramedial exists, the media cannot be total. Even if we take the technological trends of multimedia, telepresence and interactivity to their logical conclusions and beyond, there will always remain doubt that not all ground has been covered. There have always been items that didn't make the news, consumers who accidentally switched off, unused takes, near-data, one-way recording devices trained on the wrong side at the critical moment, leaky ideological grids. The Gulf War not only taught us that media can control an event on all fronts, it also brought us Hussein's Law: One can always remain invisible. Even if satellites confine one's freedom of movement to a twelve-inch margin, it is still possible to find adequate media camouflage. The nice thing about operations like Desert Storm is that the concentration of extensions on a single focus creates a proportionate medial cast shadow. Thus, antiwar actions are allotted their own Temporary Autonomous Zones (Hakim Bey) where they are free to discover their own trajectories, unhampered by the obligation to be unequivocal and without the make-up of images. Saddam Hussein's gift to the West was the joyful experience of a few weeks in the background, out of sight of the media. The mobilized medials fought their New World War still influenced by the global philosophy of the eighties, namely, that the whole world must be fed the same images. They ignored local developments, as they were ruthlessly made to understand during the subsequent massacres in Yugoslavia where the media didn't stand a chance. As the planet disintegrates and local populations become obsessed with their defrosting forebears and the genius of their locale, the media get the uncomfortable sensation that they're just going over the same old show. Ever since man first set foot on the moon, all their resources have gone to lending credibility to the slogan, "The sun is always rising somewhere." But consumer confidence in the 24-hour marketplace is now dwindling. The nonsense attitude of the nineties calls for a different appreciation of media, in which a local omnipresence is to guarantee that the brilliant transience of instances gets celebrated only in front of one, two, many cameras. The irresistible inertia of being shatters the one eye of God. The severity of classical universal themes such as the ozone layer, greenhouse effect, AIDS, refugees, drugs, recession, the Mafia, and the communist legacy is intended to suck up the user into the media. The viewers' attention fuels the media engine. Still, it is in permanent conflict with the twentieth-century yen for touristic experience. Whereas media demand absolute participation, the tourist's desire is to break out completely for a while. This oppositional constellation not only feeds the medial discomfort about John or Jane Doe, it also induces media resentment of their incredulous masses. Material media are no more than technological switches. Short-lived extramedial islands will always arise within the networks. God's great asset was his immateriality, his power always to be everywhere and to interfere even with the most local of events, down to the congregational conscience. The question of attitude is to be appreciated as a contemporary sacralization; it shares with the historical religions their aspect of immanence. If the media are to keep their sources of public devotion from becoming exhausted, they will have to move hearts and souls. Total media rule by physical absence; they owe their existence to the collective sensation that everybody is always in the picture. Theme parks represent the educational project that promotes this mentality. Here, touristic desire is eroded from within. The project carried out by total media is to recreate the outside world according to its immaculate image, such as only the media can present it (after the necessary information adjustments). No matter how sublime the upgrading of European inner cities, some human excrement always remains on screen. The profound disappointment with the image pollution that is inseparable from classical reality demands a mecha-approach of superhuman proportions. The theme park not only summarizes a given culture, it demands that the surrounding nonpark follow its example. Once outside the gates, the visitor is expected to read the old surroundings as a precursor to true civilization as solidified behind the counter. Second-rate reality is redefined as the input supplier of total media. "Do you want a total world peace?" There's no need for Americans to explore the States or their illustrious history anymore; they've been exhaustively covered in the Disney-Galaxy. Europeans don't have to cross the ocean to study the imaginary aspect of the New World. In Paris, Eurodisney offers Baudrillard all the excitement of "indomitable vigor" and "orgiastic elasticity" he can handle. Instead of the original, the Japanese prefer to stay in a 1:1 copy of the Dutch "Huis ten Bosch" or in the Deutsche Märchenstadt, Hokkaido. In this age of frenzied stagnation, there is no longer a need for corporeal confrontations with the uncomfortable world. No more notorious pickpockets, grumpy waiters, sagging hotel beds, 24-hour strikes, jet lag, or dingy restaurants. The enterprising home entrepreneur is delivered from all ecological and antropological guilt. The disturbing and oppressive sensation of being an outsider is replaced by the comfortable feeling of having truly understood a foreign civilization. Aboriginals elsewhere seem unable to value their own cultures nowadays, what with their noisy mopeds, garish souvenirs, ghetto blasters, public drunkenness, and unrestricted demolition schemes that amount to crimes against humanity. The tourist industry crisis generated by this new trend will be parried by the managers of State and Capital with relentless representational frenzy. The exclusive mechanism of this plot against the unreasonable nations is obvious. All nations will demand a park of their own, to be located on the rich nations' territory on the principle that you "get it where the money is." With development aid withdrawn, national debts frozen, and the abandoned territories having lost their exotic charm forever owing to desertification, overpopulation, civil war and epidemics, the wretched of the earth now turn to us. While the depraved dress up as refugees and try their hardest to hide their origins with false identity papers, the elites opt for safe cash flows and open so-called "reality parks" to further exploit their indigenous cultures over here. Visit Euro Machu Picchu Park near Cologne for the ultimate Peruvian experience. After forming a vigilante committee using handmade wooden rifles and meeting with liberation theologists and professional revolutionaries, you will camp outside in the freezing cold, but not until after you've seen Los Incas perform at Lambada Discotheque, of course. Witness an authentic skirmish between drunken Sendero guerrillas and the cocaine mafia over conflicting participation interests. Get struck by cholera after eating potatoes in the street; you may even get cured by an elderly Aztec herbalist. In our simulation area, witness the lack of oxygen at 13,200 feet or a case of severe air pollution; after, make a human sacrifice on top of an old Inca pyramid. Of course you won't leave without attending our make-your-own-panpipes course in Von Däniken Parlor, or a bribery workshop. To top off our three-day, all-inclusive stay, you get to participate in a real coup d'état. This park is the dream of nations! Disneyland is mere fantasy; there is so much more to enjoy. Take "Tiranacitta," Tuscany's Albanian Park, built with Italian assistance, or the Zairean park constructed south of Brussels at a cost of 600 million Belgian francs. For a change, visit theme park Katastrophia, a 1:1 replica of the twentieth century. With parks popping up everywhere, the demand for global information is swiftly dwindling. Why take in information, when the real experience is readily at hand? That is the question the twenty-first century will have to face. "More speed means less time for boredom." It remains to be seen whether the extramedial will succeed in motivating coming generations of troubleshooters to spoil the positive ambience that reigns within the ramparts of total media. ??