The tension and inversion between interior and exterior (4.2, 4.4, 4.8, 4.10) that I addressed through J.G. Ballard’s work, is present in the figure of Max Headroom: the digital space that surrounds him is his head (Headroom), his mind has been externalized and manifests itself as a space (as “room”). He is an image that dwells in his own mind.

This new possibility prompted philosopher Michael A. Weinstein to declare: “The mind is on its way to being exteriorized again.”¹ The spatialization of thought present in the figure of Max Headroom is, as should be expected, an incarnation of the mind, an idea firmly linked to the irruption of information as a biological and social parameter and the emergence of the internet and its virtual spaces. In the words of Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow:

As a result [of the opening of cyberspace], humanity is undergoing the most profound transformation of its history. Coming into the virtual world, we inhabit information. Indeed, we become information. Thought is embodied and the flesh is made word.²

Now, if thought is embodied and the flesh becomes verb, this incarnation cannot take place in our current body but in a new type of flattened body that is surface inside and out. This new body, typical of the celebrity, is appearance and media information. Let us recall here that the flesh of Merleau-Ponty has become a media surface that enshrouds the world in its entirety and that under this regime modern celebrity configures itself as its body; the third of the King’s bodies is a surface/flesh. (1.14, 2.16, 4.8).

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1. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, eds, Body Invaders, 21. ↩︎
2. Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 174. ↩︎