In this volume, which is based on the 1994 T.S. Eliot Lectures, the author places contemporary issues, such as the effect of modern technology on society and the individual, in the context of much longer discussions about the nature and role of the arts. A much longer historical process is at work by which culture is constantly undergoing re-definition, as is the whole of our apparatus of response. Smith argues, for example, that the roots of virtual reality are to be sought in older western conceptions of space, and in techniques of representing space.