The author bemoans the effect of mechanical reproduction on the work of art, calling reproduction a form of "dismemberment," a splitting of the image similar to an "attack of schizophrenia." The development of technology has reduced the margin between original and reproduction, and art has been brought into a media system characterized by globalism, mass production, and programmed response. Contemporary culture has created an equality of images, in art, popular, media, advertising, etc., effecting a disappearance of the distinction between high and low, between culture and popular culture. The disappearance of these distinctions has rendered the museum a mechanism of mass communication on par with weekly magazines and art primers; it has become a competitor with art for popular-culture box office.