Romans with machine guns and TVs.

As Canadian communication theorist Harold Innis taught us, some empires are time-biased and others are space-biased, depending on their preferred mass medium of control. Well, he probably never dreamed things like interplanetary space travel, teleportation, telekinetics and instant cross-universe communication would figure into the evolution of empires. But then he probably wasn’t a huge sci-fi fan.

At any rate, io9 looks at some of the farthest reaching (that would be a space-bias) interplanetary states with their 12 Extrateresrial Roman Empires. We especially enjoyed the questionable inclusion of the alternate Roman empire in the Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses” (pictured at right). We did notice one omission though…

In the “Cancelled” episode from South Park’s seventh season, the boys have to visit the planet of the media emperors of the universe and heads of the Fognl TV network, the Joozians: