Before and After the I- Bomb, An Artist in the Information Environment, collects some of Tom Sherman’s best thinking and writings on technology’s effects on the human condition. In this chapter, TBDF (Transborder Data Flow) written in 1982, Sherman discusses the value of Canadian media, or information, in a culture that is saturated by American ‘data.’ Written from the perspective of fictional character Andrew Czeszak, readers are lead through a monologue discussing such issues as, the fracturing of the family, cultural sovereignty, and the importance of memory and imagination.

This essay gives the television an identity that is affected by the health of our "electronic cultural heritage" which is currently being threatened by an imbalance in dialogue. The narrator's children embody two opposing perspectives signifying that cultural identity has no concrete substance as of yet except for in the imaginations of our children who must eventually externalize it.