bias in language and philosophy. An enthusiasm for Heidegger’s 
excellent linguistics could easily stem from naive immersion in 
the metaphysical organicism of our electronic milieu. If the 
mechanism of Descartes looks paltry today, it may be for the 
same subliminal reasons that it looked resplendent in its own 
time. In that sense all fashions betoken somnambulism of some 
kind, and are one means of critical orientation to the psychic 
effects of technology. Perhaps this is the way to help those 
who want to say: “But is there nothing good about print?” The 
theme of this book is not that there is anything good or bad 
about print but that unconsciousness of the effect of any  force 
is a disaster, especially a force that we have made ourselves. 
And it is quite easy to test the universal effects of print on 
Western thought after the sixteenth century, simply by 
examining the most extraordinary developments in any art or 
science whatever. Fragmented and homogeneous lineality,