Generation M(atrix)

Mark Kaplan, at his Charlotte Street blog, muses:

"Speaking of a unified world, one of my American students confided in me after a trip abroad "they don't seem to have a cafe culture in Italy, do they?" 'What?," I stammered. 'Well, I didn't see a single Starbucks all the time I was there."

As Jim Morrison might have said, 'I've been steeped in simulacra so damn long, it sure looks like the real to me." ( Mark Kaplan's Blog, charlotte street, Thursday, August 05, 2004).