a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an 
electronic brain, exactly as in an infantile piece of science 
fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother 
goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once 
move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small 
world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed 
co-existence. It is easy to perceive signs of such panic in 
Jacques Barzun who manifests himself as a fearless and 
ferocious Luddite in his The House of the Intellect . Sensing that 
all he holds dear stems from the operation of the alphabet on 
and through our minds, he proposes the abolition of all modern 
art, science, and philanthropy. This trio extirpated, he feels we 
can slap down the lid on Pandora’s box. At least Barzun 
localizes his problem even if he has no clue as to the kind of 
agency exerted by these forms. Terror is the normal state of 
any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the