For the fragmented man creates the homogenized Western world, while oral societies are made up of people differentiated, not by their specialist skil… - Marshall McLuhan

Until writing was invented, man lived in an acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.

The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery; it gave architecture and towns; it brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor with which the cycle of civilization began, the step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hand that filled the parchment page built a city.

Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise,
Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes?
That we by tracing magic lines are taught,
How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?

The sculptural qualities of the image dim down the purely personal identity. (p. 369)

Medieval and ancient sensibility now dominates our time as acoustic and multisensory awareness displaces the merely visual.