ABSTRACT: Communication via electronic media of dissemination, Niklas Luhmann assumes in his book Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (1997), is not only different from communication via other media of dissemination, most notably language, writing, and the printing press, but it is also forcing the society to change both its structure and its culture by catastrophically presenting the society with a new overflow of meaning. There is an overflow of data with no hints at to which actions and intentions might lend it accountability. Mediated via the screen, presenting us with a new relation between surface and depth, known before only from religion (and art), communication becomes dependent from structural couplings with an "invisible machine", which add to those structural couplings traditional societies entertain with spirits, ghosts, and gods, and modern society entertains with human consciousness. The present paper is trying to emphasize Luhmann's original insight and to look at the two arguments this insight consists of.

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