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06658_Field_TCUM T223.txt
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1996-04-10
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areas to some visual order. The effects of phonetic literacy do
not depend upon persuasion or cajolery for their acceptance.
This technology for translating the resonating tribal world into
Euclidean lineality and visuality is automatic. Roman roads and
Roman streets were uniform and repeatable wherever they
occurred. There was no adaptation to the contours of local hill
or custom. With the decline of papyrus supplies, the wheeled
traffic stopped on these roads, too. Deprivation of papyrus,
resulting from the Roman loss of Egypt, meant the decline of
bureaucracy, and of army organization as well. Thus the
medieval world grew up without uniform roads or cities or
bureaucracies, and it fought the wheel, as later city forms
fought the railways; and as we, today, fight the automobile.
For new speed and power are never compatible with existing
spatial and social arrangements.