In the representation of reality stress is laid upon 
the visual sense usually at the expense of all the 
other senses. Such representation began with the 
rise of phonetic literacy and cannot occur at any 
time or at any place without the presence of a 
technology that favors the visual sense at the 
expense of all the other senses. For many people 
it is one of the horrors of our present age that we 
must live amidst the effects of technologies that 
do not favor the visual sense in anything like the 
degree that phonetic literacy does. The phonetic 
alphabet, as explained in The Gutenberg Galaxy , is 
the only form of writing that abstracts sight and 
sound from meaning. This fact is stressed by