It would not have interested Newton. Not only does modern 
physics abandon the specialized visual space of Descartes and 
Newton, it re-enters the subtle auditory space of the 
nonliterate world. And in the most primitive society, as in the 
present age, such auditory space is a total field of 
simultaneous relations in which “change” has as little meaning 
and appeal as it had for the mind of Shakespeare or the heart 
of Cervantes. All values apart, we must learn today that our 
electric technology has consequences for our most ordinary 
perceptions and habits of action which are quickly recreating in 
us the mental processes of the most primitive men. These 
consequences occur, not in our thoughts or opinions, where we 
are trained to be critical, but in our most ordinary sense life, 
which creates the vortices and the matrices of thought and 
action. This book will try to explain why print culture confers on 
man a language of thought which leaves him quite unready to