its nervous system outside itself for the first time in human 
history.

     To put the Florence Nightingale story in new media terms 
is quite simple. She arrived on a distant scene where controls 
from the London centre were of the common pre-electric 
hierarchical pattern. Minute division and delegation of functions 
and separation of powers, normal in military and industrial 
organization then and long afterward, created an imbecile 
system of waste and inefficiency which for the first time got 
reported daily by telegraph. The legacy of literacy and visual 
fragmentation came home to roost every day on the telegraph 
wire:

          In England fury succeeded fury. A great storm of 
     rage, humiliation, and despair had been gathering