areas to some visual order. The effects of phonetic literacy do 
not depend upon persuasion or cajolery for their acceptance. 
This technology for translating the resonating tribal world into 
Euclidean lineality and visuality is automatic. Roman roads and 
Roman streets were uniform and repeatable wherever they 
occurred. There was no adaptation to the contours of local hill 
or custom. With the decline of papyrus supplies, the wheeled 
traffic stopped on these roads, too. Deprivation of papyrus, 
resulting from the Roman loss of Egypt, meant the decline of 
bureaucracy, and of army organization as well. Thus the 
medieval world grew up without uniform roads or cities or 
bureaucracies, and it fought the wheel, as later city forms 
fought the railways; and as we, today, fight the automobile. 
For new speed and power are never compatible with existing 
spatial and social arrangements.