Margaret Mead has reported that when she brought 
several copies of the same book to a Pacific island there was 
great excitement. The natives had seen books, but only one 
copy of each, which they had assumed to be unique. Their 
astonishment at the identical character of several books was a 
natural response to what is after all the most magical and 
potent aspect of print and mass production. It involves a 
principle of extension by homogenization that is the key to 
understanding Western power. The open society is open by 
virtue of a uniform typographic educational processing that 
permits indefinite expansion of any group by additive means. 
The printed book based on typographic uniformity and 
repeatability in the visual order was the first teaching machine, 
just as typography was the first mechanization of a handicraft. 
Yet in spite of the extreme fragmentation or specialization of 
human action necessary to achieve the printed word, the