Joyce’s thunder is at once the sound of a cultural metamorphosis as registered in and by language, the formal cause of those changes, and the act of change itself.

Eric McLuhan

Briefly after, McLuhan says “The first time, we, Finnegans all, blundered through each labyrinth in the dark; this second time we can work our way through aWake.”

I stumbled on this quote tonight in an old photo and two separate unrelated thoughts came to mind. First — that it’s a crime that the cover for a new edition of FInnegans Wake by Peter Mendelsund was never published. His proposed design was included along with other Joyce cover designs in the monograph, Cover (highly recommended).

Second, that we’re Finnegan-ing our way around everything to do with AI right now. If social media was a previous thunder, this is a second chance to stop fumbling around in the dark and see this technology for what it is — and maybe to truly consider the consequences of what we might unleash with it.