The printing press was the ultimate extension of 
phonetic literacy. Books could be reproduced in 
infinite numbers; universal literacy was at last 
fully possible, if gradually realized; and books 
became portable individual possessions. Type, the 
prototype of all machines, ensured the primacy of 
the visual bias and finally sealed the doom of 
tribal man. The new medium of linear, uniform, 
repeatable type produced information in unlimited 
quantities and at hitherto impossible speeds, thus 
assuring the eye a position of total predominance 
in man’s sensorium. As a drastic extension of 
man, it shaped and transformed his entire 
environment, psychic and social, and was directly