of man, are “make happen” agents, but not “make aware” 
agents. The hybridizing or compounding of these agents offers 
an especially favorable opportunity to notice their structural 
components and properties. “As the silent film cried out for 
sound, so does the sound film cry out for color,” wrote Sergei 
Eisenstein in his Notes of a Film Director . This type of 
observation can be extended systematically to all media: “As 
the printing press cried out for nationalism, so did the radio cry 
out for tribalism.” These media, being extensions of ourselves, 
also depend upon us for their interplay and their evolution. The 
fact that they do interact and spawn new progeny has been a 
source of wonder over the ages. It need baffle us no longer if we 
trouble to scrutinize their action. We can, if we choose, think 
things out before we put them out.

     Plato, in all his striving to imagine an ideal training school,