out of the blue

Here is a quote that I thought fascinating from a book by Cory Doctorow, a brilliant modern author and a staunch proponent of digital rights:

The most striking thing about cunning artifice is its sudden absence. While the actors are on stage, they can command our complete attention, still the nattering voices in our minds, suspend our disbelief to the rafters. But no matter how magical the action onstage is, it can't touch the shocking and wildly-dissonant moment when the curtain rings down and the lights come up, returning the theatre from a house of wonders to a mundane place of people and things. In that interstitial moment, the hot second when the world slides from fantasy to reality, our brains do a kind of flip-flop that is more interesting than anything on the stage or off it.

– A Place So Foreign and 8 More by Cory Doctorow ( amazon )

If you want to read more, most of the stories in the collection are online somewhere. The best one I've read so far is the title story. Six of the stories (including "A Place So Foreign") are located on his website (along with the introduction by Bruce Sterling), and "0wnz0red" can be found here. I can't recommend him highly enough, if you're at all intrigued by the modern world.