new mathematics and physics. Nor is writing necessary to an 
electric technology. Of course, writing and conventional 
arithmetic may long continue to be of the utmost use to man, 
for all that. Even Einstein could not face the new quantum 
physics with comfort. Too visual a Newtonian for the new task, 
he said that quanta  could not be handled mathematically. That 
is as much as to say that poetry cannot be properly translated 
into merely visual form on the printed page.

     Dantzig develops his points about number by saying that 
a literate population soon departs from the abacus and from 
finger enumeration, though arithmetic manuals in the 
Renaissance continued to give elaborate rules for calculating on 
the hands. It could be true that numbers preceded literacy in 
some cultures, but so did visual stress precede writing. For 
writing is only the principal manifestation of the extension of