[…] the rapidly increasing population of the cities through migration from the countryside […] The main cause for the migration is the rapid population growth and the inability of the agricultural sector to absorb this population. It can be said that in Turkey urbanization is more a product of the push factor than of the pull factor.

Much of what McLuhan wrote and some of what Coupland relates are beyond my ken, but I don’t know about that “hole in heaven” stuff.

The preposterous altruism too![…]Resist not evil. It is an insane immolation of self—as bad intrinsically as fakirs stabbing themselves or anchorites warping their spines in caves scarcely large enough for a fair-sized dog.

Dhirubhai Ambani's first home in Mumbai was nearly as humble as the ones the gawking labourers inhabit: a pigeonhole chawl four kilometres from Antilia, in the pushcart-clogged trading neighbourhood of Bhuleshwar.