The silent pictures were immediately acceptable across 
language barriers as the talkies were not. Radio teamed up with 
film to give us the talkie and to carry us further on our present 
reverse course of implosion or reintegration after the 
mechanical age of explosion and expansion. The extreme form 
of this implosion or contraction is the image of the astronaut 
locked into his wee bit of wraparound space. Far from enlarging 
our world, he is announcing its contraction to village size. The 
rocket and the space capsule are ending the rule of the wheel 
and the machine, as much as did the wire services, radio, and 
TV.

     We may now consider a further instance of the film’s 
influence in a most conclusive aspect. In modern literature 
there is probably no more celebrated technique than that of 
the stream of consciousness or interior monologue. Whether in