This book is based on the hypothesis that two fundamental turning points can be observed in human culture since its inception. The first, around the middle of the second millennium BC, can be summed up under the heading 'the invention of linear writing'; the second, the one we are currently experiencing, could be called 'the invention of tehnical images'. Similar turning points may have occured previously but are beyond the scope of this analysis. This hypothesis contains the suspicion that the structure of culture and therefore existence itself is undergoing a fundamental change. This book attempts to strenghten suspicion and, in order to maintain its hypothetical quality, avoids quotations from earlier works on similar themes.