State of Change: no new episode this week

I've been at a wedding and therefore have missed a week of updating State of Change. Part eight will appear next Sunday. In the meantime, here's a handy catch-up sheet for those following at home

The Epigraph
Which is pretty important and, I think has come true in the years since I first read it. Here it is, since it's not very long:

“No longer content to wait for social movements to bubble up from the ‘burbs, young, fresh and sniffing for product, a cute symbiosis of media outlets and cultural product firms synthesize them between themselves. ...Far from being a credible claim to futurity, the Marketing Plan follows a relentlessly sideways logic of replacing one product-rhetoric-art’n’theory mix with the next, different from the last in exactly the same way as the last was different to the batch before that. ...Hype may very well be the future of culture.” - McKenzie Wark, “Cyberhype”, World Art, November 1994.

Introduction
Some words of excuse by the author.

Part One: The Fear
In which we are introduced to our hero, Arlo Makepeace Dylan, and his millieu.

Part Two: The Offer
Dylan hears some bad news and is thrown a lifeline.

Part Three: A Little Bit Like A Lobotomy
Dylan undergoes brain surgery and meets his new flatmates.

Part Four: The New Direction
Dylan has some unusual experiences and attends a party.

Part Five: The Silver Machine
Some more unusual experiences, and another party.

Part Six: Mind Fuck/Body Fuck
Things get a bit nasty and a decisive event occurs.

Part Seven: Psychedelic Supernazis
In which a Belgian is accidentally murdered.

Only three(ish) parts to gonow, true believers!