May thy Father Noah’s Brood 
     Like him drown, but in thy Flood. 
     Speak, so may the Liquid Mine 
     Of Rubies, or of Diamonds shine.

Every technology contrived and outered by man has the power 
to numb human awareness during the period of its first 
interiorization.

*     That wisdom and knowledge should be distilled from the 
press  seemed an obvious metaphor to anybody in the sixteenth 
century. Just how deeply the printed book was embedded in the 
preceding culture is made manifest by Curt Bühler in The  
Fifteenth Century Book: the Scribes; the Printers; the  
Decorators . Bühler tells of the “very considerable number of 
such manuscripts, copied from printed books” that have