Just as the remote control allowed a generation to deconstruct the content of television, the video game joystick demystified its technology.

Thanks to the joystick, as well as the subsequent introduction of the VCR and camcorder, we were empowered to move the pixels ourselves.

Just as the remote control allowed viewers to deconstruct the content of storytelling, the joystick allowed the audience to demystify the technology through which these stories were being told.

The Backlash These new communities are perhaps why the effects of the remote, joystick and mouse represented such a tremendous threat to business as usual.

It was both through the specific, if misguided, actions of some media executives, as well as the much more unilateral response of an entire media culture responding to a threat to the status quo, that mainstream media began to reverse the effects of the remote, the joystick and the mouse.

The demystification of media, enabled by the joystick and other early interactive technologies, was quickly reversed through the development of increasingly opaque computer interfaces.

The airman's "joystick" is a gadget; the tank is not.