ToKers:

In 1993, at roughtly the same time WIRED launched (with Marshall McLuhan as its "Patron Saint"), ABC aired a mini-series called "Wild Palms," produced and directed by Oliver Stone -- based on Bruce Wagner's LA-centric comic series with that name.  The first episode was called "Everything Must Go."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1733086/

Set, as IMDB puts it, in the "near future" of 2007, the series was about the *digital* takeover of American politics (as it turns out set on the actual eve of Obama's election, while needing another 8 years to really take place), the version of digital imagined by Stone &al was pure TELEVISION fantasy -- involving a holographic display device called "Mimecon," a new religion called "Synthiotics" and an associated drug called "Mimizine" (that caused blue snot to run down your face.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Palms

When I started my 2nd salon, the Non-Linear Circle, in 1998, I put together an edited "highlight" version which we viewed.  I sometimes use the phrase "So, this is how it all begins!" -- which comes from the first episode, in which the star (played by Jim Beluchi) finds himself in an empty swimming-pool staring in the face of a while rhinoceros (also flashed to in the trailer.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJMPCGo42cE

Here we are, once again.  DIGITAL has already informed us that *everything* must go.  "Five Eyes" has mobilized to stop "illicit content."  George Gilder has been mobilized to shout on behalf of the "blockchain."  Not a single decorated Vietnam soldier spoke at McCain's funderal, while, instead, he was eulogized by draft-dodgers.  The *structure* of our lives has already fundamentally changed.

Who are you going to call . . . ??

Mark

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