speech at the Nuremberg trials, made some bitter remarks 
about the effects of electric media on German life: “The 
telephone, the teleprinter and the wireless made it possible for 
orders from the highest levels to be given direct to the lowest 
levels, where, on account of the absolute authority behind 
them, they were carried out uncritically . . .” 

     The tendency of electric media is to create a kind of 
organic interdependence among all the institutions of society, 
emphasizing de Chardin’s view that the discovery of 
electromagnetism is to be regarded as “a prodigious biological 
event.” If political and commercial institutions take on a 
biological character by means of electric communications, it is 
also common now for biologists like Hans Selye to think of the 
physical organism as a communication network: “Hormone is a 
specific chemical messenger-substance, made by an endocrine