mass consumer phase. It was, on the other hand, the First War 
that had readied America for the same consumer “take-off.” It 
took the electronic implosion  to dissolve the nationalist 
diversity of a splintered Europe, and to do for it what the 
industrial explosion  had done for America. The industrial 
explosion that accompanies the fragmenting expansion of 
literacy and industry was able to exert little unifying effect in 
the European world with its numerous tongues and cultures. 
The Napoleonic thrust had utilized the combined force of the 
new literacy and early industrialism. But Napoleon had had a 
less homogenized set of materials to work with than even the 
Russians have today. The homogenizing power of the literate 
process had gone further in America by 1800 than anywhere in 
Europe. From the first, America took to heart the print 
technology for its educational, industrial, and political life; and 
it was rewarded by an unprecedented pool of standardized