Rather than a new orality, as McLuhan and others predicted, electronic technology seems to me to be moving us into increasing dependence on and interest in the visual. The question is how and whether these new visual modes can be brought together with forms of symbolic communication in prose. First, printed books may or may not disappear as a cultural form. I don't know and don't think it's very important. Second, the greater issue is what will happen to writing itself.
Computer graphics pose a serious threat to the primacy of writing.
The relationship of word and image is changing in our culture, and this change is now related to the rise of computer graphics, as it was related to film and television in the past century. I think that's not necessarily true in this case. The shifting balance between word and image is not technically determined, but it is simply too attractive for our culture now to forgo. Reprinted with permission from Liberal Education, vol.