We remake the world through our technologies, and these in turn remake and extend us, in ever spiraling lattices of complexity. McLuhan uncannily foresaw the future, where electronic technology would shape and expand cultures and societies into a global membrane of communications.

We have to learn how to contact one another over an enormous land space, across five-and-a-half time zones, in what as once a wilderness of scattered settlements, in what is now a sprawl of suburban edge cities and satellite towns. Technology forges connections and disconnections here.

A just society will appear less spectacular, and less clearly defined, than a society with totalitarian leadership, theocratic goals.

We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.

Alienation and loneliness plant the seeds for rebellion and consciousness.

Democracies should be a delirium of choices - more options, not fewer; more avenues to travel, not fewer.

Enlightenment should be a human right.