A short scene from David Cronenberg’s sci-fi body horror film, Videodrome (1982): in an inner-city mission house, cubicles lining the floor from wall to wall emit the soft blue light and ambient buzz of a cathode-ray tube (CRT) television. This is a place of refuge, supposedly. Its purpose is to reintegrate homeless people into society through the friendly glow of a screen. 

"Watching TV will help patch them back into the world's mixing board," says Bianca O’Blivion, one of the film’s Dickensian protagonists. But, in reality, this refuge has become a sort of prison. The viewers cannot tear their eyes from the displays that are meant to return them to the world.

Cronenberg's Cathode Ray Mission presciently captures a present-day contradiction: that technology which is meant to bring people back into the company of others just as often pulls them into isolation. And who isn't looking for a dose of oblivion? But we must dream bigger! And we must remember that the protection of a sanctuary is different from the isolation of a cell.