The Electronic Revolution

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**Title** **The Electronic Revolution**
1971 Blackmoor Press paperback edition.
Author	William S. Burroughs
Country	United Kingdom, West Germany
Language	English
Genre(s)	essay
Publisher	Expanded Media Editions
Released	1970
Media type	Print (Paperback)

The Electronic Revolution is an essay by William S. Burroughs that was first published in 1970 by Expanded Media Editions in West Germany. A second edition, published in 1971 in London, England, contained additional French translation by Jean Chopin.

The book is divided into two parts. Part one, entitled "The Feedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden" invokes Alfred Korzybski’s views characterising a man as "the time binding machine" due to his ability to write. Burroughs sees the significance of a written word as a distinguishing feature of human beings which enables them to transform and convey information to further generations. He proposes the theory of "the unrecognised virus" present in the language, suggesting that, "the word has not been recognised as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host."

The second part, "Electronic Revolution" concerns the power of alphabetic non-pictorial languages to control people. It draws attention to the subversive influence of the word virus on human beings and dangerous possibilities of using human voice as a weapon. Recording words on tape recorders and employing the Cut-up technique (a form of writing frequently employed by Burroughs) can easily lead to the false news broadcasts or garbled political speeches causing confusion and psychic control over individuals.

The Electronic Revolution influenced various musicians in the 1970s such as the industrial band Cabaret Voltaire.^{[citation needed]} Richard R. Kirk, a member of a group who excelled in electronic music, employed many ideas and methods from the book in the creation of his music. He described it as "a handbook of how to use tape recorders in a crowd ... to promote a sense of unease or unrest by playback of riot noises cut in with random recordings of the crowd itself."^{[citation needed]}