From a series of socially provocative cartoons by Tom Gauld, it was really hard to choose one to represent the lot. They remind me vaguely of Ron Cobb (who was incidentally the author of the very first poltical cartoon book that I bought, Raw Sewage), except that Gauld’s cartoons have a more distant, metaphorical humor. I found the image above, “evolution of the poetry receptacle,” to be irresistable. With a few simple lines, Gauld has captured our trajectory perfectly: tablet > scroll > bound volume > chapbook > laptop > potato viewer > potato mutant > wireframe. Presumably when we get beyond the wireframe of the poem, we can just zap consciousness around by telepathy… either that or we will be eating termites out of dust-heaps, or both probably.