My book reading habits frequently inspire paranoia. Perhaps it does not help that I started the week reading generics Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, putting me in a particular mood to notice trumpet-shaped logos everywhere. I next picked up Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown, which contains a brief mention of "virtual-reality maven" Howard Rheingold and his stewardship of the The Whole Earth Review. As I finished the book I arrived in the city to meet with meta, who had just spent all day at the Intel's Urban Atmospheres Street Talk, which included, coincidentally, a panel with Howard Rheingold. As Rheingold is a prominent figure in his field, I was not yet surprised, but I next picked up Johnson's Emergence, which mentioned Rheingold's The Virtual Community. ENOUGH!!!

A virtual reality expert deft in the art of electronic media and communication? Howard Rheingold, I say thou art a modern day Templar! I must escape your collapsing media stranglehold on me!

I must choose my books more carefully.

Update: hmm, meta recommended Lot 49, Emergence is meta's book, and Emergence was apparently mentioned during the Urban Atmospheres event that meta attended and Rheingold spoke at... It's all so clear now.