Industries, unlike organisms, have no organic limits on their own growth; they are constantly in search of new markets, or of new ways to exploit old ones more effectively; as Karl Marx unsympathetically observed, they “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.” Soon, the posters came to define Paris; by one contemporary account, the city was “hardly more than an immense wall of posters scattered from the chimneys down to sidewalks with clusters of squares of paper of all colors and formats, not to mention simple inscriptions.”

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 68