society possessing the alphabet can translate any adjacent 
cultures into its alphabetic mode. But this is a one-way 
process. No non-alphabetic culture can take over an alphabetic 
one, because the alphabet cannot be assimilated; it can only 
liquidate or reduce. However, in the electronic age we may have 
discovered the limits of the alphabet technology. It need no 
longer seem strange that peoples like the Greeks and Romans, 
who had experienced the alphabet, should also have been 
driven in the direction of conquest and organization-at-a-
distance. Harold Innis, in Empire and Communications , was the 
first to pursue this theme and to explain in detail the simple 
truth of the Cadmus myth. The Greek King Cadmus, who 
introduced the phonetic alphabet to Greece, was said to have 
sown the dragon’s teeth and that they sprang up armed men. 
(The dragon’s teeth may allude to the old hieroglyphic forms.) 
Innis also explained why print causes nationalism and not