b'The borscht cant lie.There is nothing more real, at a time when means are swamping ends and economic growth is losing its purchase as the sole arbiter of progress, than our confusion about the fake and the real. Were sorely tempted to see the latest confusion about the fake and the real as unique to our times.The contest between the fake and the real has been going on since the dawn of civilization. The shadows on the wall of Platos cavereal or fake? The fortunes made and lost in Hollands Tulip Maniareal or fake? K-rationsreal or fake? The Dow Jones Industrial Averagereal or fake? Befuddlement in the wake of technological innovation has been with us for at least 500 years. Take the advent of the printing press, for instance. The movable type printing press was the great revolution in Renaissance information technology and arguably provides the closest historical parallel to the emergence of the internet, observes Professor Jeremiah Dittmar of the London School of Economics. The first printing press was developed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 in Mainz, Germany, and the first mass print run of a book, 180 copies, was the Gutenberg Bible. By 1500, some 200 European cities had a printing press. At the same time, a very different text also went viral. By 1520, twenty editions of the Malleus Maleficarum had been printed. It became known in many quarters as 64'