down as sight. Sound was too subjective, indefinite, too ‘stimulating.’ To paraphrase McLuhan, image was all about perspective, taking you out of the picture. Sound pulled you right back in again; an emotional must, if you called yourself a human being, but so hard to quantify.

Dr. Al-Tharthar paused, revving up for the climax to his presentation. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that the superpower that launched the Great War insisted on filming its soldiers raiding people’s homes, searching for terrorist hideouts and ‘terrifying’ families?” The pun was intended. “Do you really think it was a coincidence that they broadcast those horrendous images to the world, images I tell you, with the sound turned off?”

Then something unpredictable happened.

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