commodities.

     It is quite easy to establish the fact that the same means 
that served to create the world of consumer abundance by 
mass production served also to put the highest levels of 
artistic production on a more assured and consciously 
controlled basis. And, as usual, when some previously opaque 
area becomes translucent, it is because we have moved into 
another phase from which we can contemplate the contours of 
the preceding situation with ease and clarity. It is this fact that 
makes it feasible to write The Gutenberg Galaxy  at all. As we 
experience the new electronic and organic age with ever 
stronger indications of its main outlines, the preceding 
mechanical age becomes quite intelligible. Now that the 
assembly line recedes before the new patterns of information, 
synchronized by electric tape, the miracles of mass production