And from everyday life to cultural life, too, there's been a vogue for the transparent. The 1990s art of Damien Hirst involved making animals transparent by slicing them up and then sticking them in clear glass vitrines.

Metaphorically, C-Span is transparent television -- showing us raw, unmediated political and government reality. In design, the extremely simple, utilitarian look of Web sites like Google and Yahoo are said to be transparent design. And of course, the internet itself is the great modern enabler of transparency - it makes more information than ever before available to more people all of the time.

But now, I'm here to announce, transparency is passé. Translucence is on the rise. And I think it's because as desirable as transparency is in so many utilitarian ways - in business, in government, online… In art and design and culture I think we actually crave a certain amount of complexity; some interesting murkiness. Translucency.

The official start of the translucent age was the summer of 1998, when Apple's translucent iMac computers were introduced. The iMac was not a boring opaque beige box like every other computer. But it wasn't transparent, either. A transparent computer would have been a novelty item just for gearheads, a quick one-liner as a design object, and I think a dud in the marketplace. Instead, the Apple designers realized that they had to make a computer that was visually complex. It needed to reward an extended gaze, and not keep all its secrets hidden, like regular computers, but not nakedly reveal everything about its insides, either. In other words, it had to be translucent.

And call me crazy, but I also see the ascendance of metaphorical translucence almost everywhere I look these days. Most of the most interesting art and entertainment right now is translucent, not transparent.

By which I mean works of art and entertainment that are not instantly obvious, that don't give all their secrets away at once, that illuminate, but don't harshly expose. They're works of art that glow. Regular circuses are transparent. The lush, surreal Cirque du Soleil is translucent.

In literature, there are splendidly translucent writers like Don DeLillo and Dave Eggers. On television, there's the deeply murky X-Files. And in movies, the extraordinary success of the literally awesome and mysterious Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - the translucent film of the year.

Or take music - the music of Britney Spears is transparent. Perky, sexy, girly pop. Period. But the music of Moby - is it electronica? Is it blues? Is it pop? It's all of the above. But its essence remains half-hidden, slightly murky, which is central to its beauty and its appeal.

I know this distinction between transparency and translucency isn't necessarily easy to get or absolutely clear. But it is real. And if I were absolutely clear I wouldn't be translucent, would I?

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.