Avital Ronell. The Experimental Disposition: Nietzsche's Discovery of America (Or, Why the Present Administration Sees Everything in Terms of a Test)

Wasted a fair bit of patriotic young flesh in order to test some new technology.
William Gibson, Neuromancer

We do not always know how to calculate the importance of a work. In some cases, there is nothing even to guarantee that the work will arrive. Some works seem to set an ETA -- there is a sense that it will take them years to make their arrangements, overcome the obstacles of an unprotected journey, get past the false reception desks blocking their paths. In the more assured and seductive version, these works follow the itinerary of Walter Benjamin's secret rendezvous -- targeting the geheime Verabredung that a work has made with the singularity of a destination: in the form, perhaps, of a future reader