The decision to use the hot printed medium in place of 
the cool, participational, telephone medium is unfortunate in 
the extreme. No doubt the decision was prompted by the 
literary bias of the West for the printed form, on the ground 
that it is more impersonal than the telephone. The printed form 
has quite different implications in Moscow from what it has in 
Washington. So with the telephone. The Russians’ love of this 
instrument, so congenial to their oral traditions, is owing to the 
rich nonvisual involvement it affords. The Russian uses the 
telephone for the sort of effects we associate with the eager 
conversation of the lapel-gripper whose face is twelve inches 
away.

     Both telephone and teleprinter as amplifications of the 
unconscious cultural bias of Moscow, on one hand, and of 
Washington, on the other, are invitations to monstrous