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07187_Field_TCUM T752.txt
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mass consumer phase. It was, on the other hand, the First War
that had readied America for the same consumer “take-off.” It
took the electronic implosion to dissolve the nationalist
diversity of a splintered Europe, and to do for it what the
industrial explosion had done for America. The industrial
explosion that accompanies the fragmenting expansion of
literacy and industry was able to exert little unifying effect in
the European world with its numerous tongues and cultures.
The Napoleonic thrust had utilized the combined force of the
new literacy and early industrialism. But Napoleon had had a
less homogenized set of materials to work with than even the
Russians have today. The homogenizing power of the literate
process had gone further in America by 1800 than anywhere in
Europe. From the first, America took to heart the print
technology for its educational, industrial, and political life; and
it was rewarded by an unprecedented pool of standardized