To the student of media, it is difficult to explain the 
human indifference to social effects of these radical forces. The 
phonetic alphabet and the printed word that exploded the 
closed tribal world into the open society of fragmented 
functions and specialist knowledge and action have never been 
studied in their roles as a magical transformer. The antithetic 
electric power of instant information that reverses social 
explosion into implosion, private enterprise into organization 
man, and expanding empires into common markets, has 
obtained as little recognition as the written word. The power of 
radio to retribalize mankind, its almost instant reversal of 
individualism into collectivism, Fascist or Marxist, has gone 
unnoticed. So extraordinary is this unawareness that it  is what 
needs to be explained. The transforming power of media is easy 
to explain, but the ignoring of this power is not at all easy to 
explain. It goes without saying that the universal ignoring of