meagre amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of 
low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be 
filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not 
leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot 
media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are 
high in participation or completion by the audience. Naturally, 
therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effects on 
the user from a cool medium like the telephone.

     A cool medium like hieroglyphic or ideogrammic written 
characters has very different effects  from the hot and explosive 
medium of the phonetic alphabet. The alphabet, when pushed 
to a high degree of abstract visual intensity, became 
typography. The printed word with its specialist intensity burst 
the bonds of medieval corporate guilds and monasteries, 
creating extreme individualist patterns of enterprise and