I have a couple of thoughts on this piece, especially the Number of the Beast section. The first is sort of an anecdote, but I have been experimenting over the last couple of months with trying to get my friends to switch to Signal. For the most part it has not been a great success (I guess a law school course on persuasion would be extremely useful for me), but I will point out that it was tremendously valuable to me personally that there were people who agreed to switch simply because I told them that it matters to me. Along these lines and as a big fan of TS Eliot, I think J Alfred Prufrock has a place in this sort of conversation.

The second is I think the usage of a biblical reference is a shrewd one. While I was living my rich and flourishing social life by wandering around the Met Museum alone, I came across this sculpture (slightly NSFW) which I think is a prescient study of the relationship between people and their smartphones. I haven't done enough reading on religion and sociology to really be academic about it, but it seems to me to be correct. Eben has invoked Marx and the opiate of the masses before (I know he did in Law in the Net Society, I can't remember if he did in this course) which is almost surely part of it, but I think the sculpture adds to the conversation in terms of the physical relationship with the device and driving the point home. I don't know if a picture really does it justice though, so I would suggest checking it out in person.

-- MattConroy - 16 May 2018