When technology makes behavior explicit, the resulting images often seem more important - even sacred or obscene. Most people swear, but when they hear blasphemy or obscenity on film or radio, action becomes artifact, and the explicit artifact offends them more than the action itself.

We know little about this, other than the fact that it's true. Any technology, including language, can make reality frighteningly explicit, especially human reality. T. S. Eliot tells us that human beings cannot stand too much reality, by which he means, I assume, too much explicitness about reality. "A fearful thing is knowledge," says Tiresias in Oedipus Rex, "when to know helpeth no end."

It's a serious mistake to underestimate the trauma any new technology produces, especially any new communications technology. When people first encounter writing, they seem always to suffer great psychic dislocation. With speech, they hear consciousness, but with writing they see it. They suddenly experience a new way of being in relation to reality. "How do I know what to think," asks Alice, "till I see what I say?"

Seeing one's name for the first time can be electrifying. Isak Dinesen tells of recording a deposition for an illiterate Kikuyu:

When Jogona had at last come to the end of his tale, and I had got it all down, I told him that I was now going to read it to him. He turned away from me while I was reading, as if to avoid all distractions.

But as I read out his name ... he swiftly turned his face to me, and gave me a great fierce flaming glance, so exuberant with laughter that it changed the old man into a boy, into the very symbol of youth. Again as I had finished the document and was reading out his name ... the vital glance was repeated, this time deepened and calmed, with a new dignity .

Such a glance did Adam give the Lord when He formed him out of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. I had created him and shown him himself: Jogona Kanyagga of life everlasting. When I handed him the paper, he took it reverently and greedily, folded it up in a corner of his cloak and kept his hand upon it, and there was the proof of his existence. Here was something which Jogona Kanyagga had performed, and which would preserve his name forever: the flesh was made word and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.