"The invention of the written word was the seperating membrane dividing the I from the all-that-is-not-I and casting Western civilization into a [...] world of isolation, objectivity, and rationality." -- Mark Dery "Escape Velocity: CyberCulture at the end of the Century" "The whole [person] became fragmented [when] the alphabet shattered the charmed circle and resonating magic of the tribal world, exploding [us] into an agglomoration of specialised and psychically impoverished individuals, or units, functioning in a world of linear time and Euclidean space." -- Marshall McLuhan, Playboy interview 1969