One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.

Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth.

What is very little understood about the electronic age is that it angelizes man, disembodies him. Turns him into software.

Today, the mass audience (the successor to the "public") can be used as a creative, participating force. It is, instead, merely given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions.

Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.

The alphabet was one thing when applied to clay or stone, and quite another when set down on light papyrus.

Every innovation scraps its immediate predecessor and retrieves still older figures – it causes floods of antiques or nostalgic art forms and stimulates the search for museum pieces.