mechanistic technology that renders us so helpless and inept in 
handling the new electric technology. The new physics is an 
auditory domain and long-literate society is not at home in the 
new physics, nor will it ever be.

     This, of course, is to overlook the utter discrepancy 
between the phonetic alphabet and any other kind of writing 
whatever. Only the phonetic alphabet makes a break between 
eye and ear, between semantic meaning and visual code; and 
thus only phonetic writing has the power to translate man from 
the tribal to the civilized sphere, to give him an eye for an ear. 
The Chinese culture is considerably more refined and perceptive 
than the Western world has ever been. But the Chinese are 
tribal, people of the ear. “Civilization” must now be used 
technically to mean detribalized man for whom the visual 
values have priority in the organization of thought and action.