Nov 29, 2008 0
Two of the following three legal actions were actually taken in the recent past; the third occurs in William Gaddis’s masterful 1994 satire of the American legal system, A Frolic of His Own.
1. A Pennsylvanian filed a lawsuit against Satan.
2. A Californian filed an amicus brief on behalf of God.
3. A Nebraskan filed a lawsuit against God.
Which is the fiction?
Nov 9, 2008 0
Marshall McLuhan, in his 1964 book Understanding Media, advances the notion that as the globe becomes increasingly interconnected by electronic technology it becomes “no more than a village. Electric speed in bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree.” The effect of this “implosive factor,” McLuhan maintains, is to alter the position of marginalized subjects, who “can no longer be contained, in the political sense of limited association. They are now involved in our lives, and we in theirs, thanks to the electric media.”
