the empires of the ancient world. The stirrup and the wheel 
created unique environments of enormous scope. Technological 
environments are not merely passive containers of people but 
are active processes that reshape people and other 
technologies alike. In our time the sudden shift from the 
mechanical technology of the wheel to the technology of 
electric circuitry represents one of the major shifts of all 
historical time. Printing from movable types created a quite 
unexpected new environment—it created the PUBLIC. 
Manuscript technology did not have the intensity or power of 
extension necessary to create publics on a national scale. What 
we have called “nations” in recent centuries did not, and could 
not, precede the advent of Gutenberg technology any more 
than they can survive the advent of electric circuitry with its 
power of totally involving all people in all other people.