the current anxieties of civilized man concerning the written 
word. To some Westerners the written or printed word has 
become a very touchy subject. It is true that there is more 
material written and printed and read today than ever before, 
but there is also a new electric technology that threatens this 
ancient technology of literacy built on the phonetic alphabet. 
Because of its action in extending our central nervous system, 
electric technology seems to favor the inclusive and 
participational spoken word over the specialist written word. 
Our Western values, built on the written word, have already 
been considerably affected by the electric media of telephone, 
radio, and TV. Perhaps that is the reason why many highly 
literate people in our time find it difficult to examine this 
question without getting into a moral panic. There is the 
further circumstance that, during his more than two thousand 
years of literacy, Western man has done little to study or to