burden in just understanding and clarifying the issues. On the 
other hand, since consciousness and awareness seem to be a 
human privilege, may it not be desirable to extend this 
condition to our hidden conflicts, both private and social?

     The present book, in seeking to understand many media, 
the conflicts from which they spring, and the even greater 
conflicts to which they give rise, holds out the promise of 
reducing these conflicts by an increase of human autonomy. 
Let us now note a few of the effects of media hybrids, or of the 
interpenetration of one medium by another.

     Life at the Pentagon has been greatly complicated by jet 
travel, for example. Every few minutes an assembly gong rings 
to summon many specialists from their desks to hear a 
personal report from an expert from some remote part of the