the Marxian dialectic than the idea that linguistic media shape 
social development, as much as do the means of production.

     In fact, of all the great hybrid unions that breed furious 
release of energy and change, there is none to surpass the 
meeting of literate and oral cultures. The giving to man of an 
eye for an ear by phonetic literacy is, socially and politically, 
probably the most radical explosion that can occur in any 
social structure. This explosion of the eye, frequently repeated 
in “backward areas,” we call Westernization. With literacy now 
about to hybridize the cultures of the Chinese, the Indians, and 
the Africans, we are about to experience such a release of 
human power and aggressive violence as makes the previous 
history of phonetic alphabet technology seem quite tame.

     That is only the East side story, for the electric implosion