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WHITE NOISE by Don Delillo One particularly unfortunate trait of modern society is our futile attempt to use technology to immunize ourselves against the fear of death. The failure of technology in this regard is the general subject of Don Delillo’s book White Noise. Throughout this novel, technology is depicted as the ominous messenger of our common fate, an increasing sense of dread over loss of control of our lives and the approach of inevitable death in spite of the empty promises of technology. In this essay I will examine Delillo’s portrayal of technology and its role in our society. The title of Delillo’s book, White Noise, reminds one of an electronic static of the sort encountered on television when a station goes off the air. But I think white noise can also refer to the indiscriminate flow of information we are exposed to on a daily basis in our modern society, that which ultimately destroys the immediacy of real life. If you see enough people gunned down on television, enough mangled bodies in twisted cars, enough violence, destruction and despair in the newspapers, you grow numb to it. In one sense, I think this is what White Noise is. Have you seen those devices they sell for insomniacs?