The effrontery

   I credit the New American Government,

   don't you, with sensitizing us to a

   general crisis of our time, only tan-

   gentially typified in the President's

   indefatigable resolve to Notify us of

   his disturbances in real time. Still,

   if there could be a more banal remind-

   er of the asynchronous persistence of 

   the Notifications storm which seizes

   our devices in self-indulgent demand,

   than the President's hiccoughing har-

   angues from his valise of grime and

   halberds and bile, it would have to

   be that other most ironically named

   nuisance, Flash - a translation sys-

   tem which ingratiated itself early

   with visualization manufacturers, to

   require more attention than will ever

   be justified by its usefulness. And 

   we are to be exercised by torrents of

   corruption in the information we get,

   through conduits of such instability?

   Has it been established, that any at-

   tention span can endure Notification?

   I'm with the President in his skeptic-

   ism. What is continuity worth today?

   But you are, Mr Woltz, a bandleader;

   and you do make yourself, ridiculous.

Mario Puzo and
  Francis Ford Coppola
screenplay
The Godfather
Paramount, 1972©