who pioneered in the invention of paper, printing, 
     gunpowder, and the compass—to speak only of some of 
     their best known innovations—did not also take 
     precedence in devising the power loom, the steam engine, 
     and the other revolutionary machines of the eighteenth 
     and nineteenth centuries.

The purpose of printing among the Chinese was not the 
creation of uniform repeatable products for a market and a 
price system. Print was an alternative to their prayer wheels 
and was a visual means of multiplying incantatory spells, much 
like advertising in our age.

     But we can learn much about print from the Chinese 
attitude towards it. For the most obvious character of print is 
repetition, just as the obvious effect of repetition is hypnosis or