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397NOTES TO PAGES335-348seem to be based on spurious categories, but they also make it difficult to perceivethe distinctive amalgam which resulted from collaboration between diverse pressuregroups" (a06). One does not have to espouse pluralism to recognize that Marxistanalyses could easily incorporate evidence provided by Eisenstein.7. Nelson, Computer Lib,1/4. Nelson also points out: "Tomorrow's hypertext networkshave immense political ramifications, and there are many struggles to come.Many vested interests may turn out to be opposed to freedom . . . For rolled into suchdesigns and prospects is the whole future of humanity and, indeed, the future of thepast and the future of the future-meaning the kinds of future that become forbidden,or possible" (3 ll9).8. In TheGutenbergGalaxy,2l,6, Mcluhan quotes Harold Innis,The Biosof Communication(Toronto: University ofToronto Press), 29 "The effectofthe discovery ofprinting was evident in the savage religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. Application of power to communication industries hastened the consolidationofvernaculars, the rise ofnationalism, revolution, and new outbreaks ofsavageryin the twentieth century."9. In print this thrust appears with particular clarity in the radical new discoverythat the best way to preserve information lies in disseminating large numbers ofcopies of a text containing it rather than keeping it secret; see Eisenstein, PintingPress, 1L6.10. Professor Ulmer made these comments in the course of the 1988 Universityof Alabama conference Literaol Online.LL. He continues on the same page: "The edifying philosophers are thus agreeingwith Lessing s choice of the infinite striving for truth over 'all of Truth.' For theedifilng philosopher tJle very idea of being presented with 'all of Truth'is absurd,because the Platonic notion of Truth itself is absurd."12. Popper, The Open Society and lts Enemies, argues that Plato developed hisconceptions of humanity, society, and philosophy in reaction to the political disorderof his time. Plato's "theory of Forms or Ideas," according to Popper, has threemain functions within his thought: (1) as a methodological device that "makes possiblepure scientific knowledge"; (2) as a "clue" to a theory ofchange, decay, and history;and (3) as the basis ofa historicist "social engineering" that can arrest socialchange (30-31). Popper argues that Plato bases his ideal state on Sparta, "a slavestate, and accordingly Plato's best state is based on the most rigid class distinctions.It is a caste state. The problem of avoiding class war is solved, not by abolishingclasses, but by giving the ruling class a superiority which cannot be challenged" (46).Popper, who attacks Plato for providing the ultimate ideological basis of fascism,claims that in The Republic Plato "used the term 'just' as a synonym for 'that whichis in the interest of the best state'. And what is in the interest of this best statel Toarrest all change, by the maintenance of a rigid class division and class rule. If I amright in this interpretation, then we should have to say that Plato's demand for justiceleaves his political programme at the level of totalitarianism" (89).13. Working hard to find some point of agreement, the priest adds that hisgod also "is in the sky," but he then makes a theological claim that appears completelybizarre and inappropriate from a Shona point of view when he tells the man