The continuity of Greek and medieval art was assured by the bond between caelatura or engraving and illumination. The increase of visual stress among the Greeks alienated them from the primitive art that the electronic age now reinvents after interiorizing the “unified field”of electric all- at-onceness. A nomadic society cannot experience enclosed space. Primitivism has become the vulgar cliché of much modern art and speculation. The Gutenberg Galaxy is concerned to show why alphabetic man was disposed to desacralize his mode of being.