our extended senses or technologies should repeat the process 
of translation and assimilation of one form into another. This 
process may well be inseparable from the character of touch, 
and from the abrasively interfaced action of surfaces, whether 
in chemistry or crowds or technologies. The mysterious need of 
crowds to grow and to reach out, equally characteristic of large 
accumulations of wealth, can be understood if money and 
numbers are, indeed, technologies that extend the power of 
touch and the grasp of the hand. For numbers, whether of 
people or of digits, and units of money would seem to possess 
the same factual magic for seizing and incorporating.

     The Greeks ran head-on into the problem of translating 
their own new media when they tried to apply rational 
arithmetic to a problem in geometry. Up arose the spectre of 
Achilles and the tortoise. These attempts resulted in the first