ORAL SOCIETIES, WRITTEN CULTURES, PRINT ERAS. NEXT? THE MULTIMEDIA AGE 

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When long-existing oral tribal societies were overwhelmed by the organizational abilities based on writing of newly-emergent agrarian cultures the oral tribes couldn't understand what happened. When agrarian cultures in turn were thrust aside by the emergence of a new society based on mechanical type, the agrarians became confused and were pushed into a lesser role. Today, many people in the western world, the leading benefactor of the Gutenberg phenomenon, are acutely confused by the new dynamic and varied mixture of technological media, spewing out new forms that appear to come from some magical and frighteningly endless cornucopia.

It is definitely a new age. The volume and speed of change is unstoppable. Universal technology makes the laws and breaks the laws. Current cultures are fast fading.

In days when passing on information, stories, lessons and culture was the duty of all, everyone participated. Great respect was paid to those who graduated to become the wise elders of the tribe and the storytellers of history. It was their "right" as the gods had ordained.

When writing developed, an exceedingly small elite gained control of those around them because they held the 'magical books' of the realm. Records kept in such books became a power previously unknown. Such unquestioned 'knowledge' brought power and the elite turned to royalty. Shahs, kings and emperors flowered, rapidly taking over the unorganized tribes whose abilities were limited to human memory. Oral societies could not comprehend how this happened because they could not read those lines of powerful written words. The days of the tribal chief ended in all "progressive" lands.

When Gutenberg produced moveable type (50 years after the Koreans), for the first time knowledge became available to the inquisitive who sensed that reading and writing had unknown power. The literate became the new industrial age royalty, barons of production, wealthier by a factor of 30 over the richest of the previous age. Empires spread and industrial domination became the "right" of those who learned how to direct such power.

Portugal, Spain, Britain and then the United States led that new age. In 1945 the United States controlled more than 50 percent of the wealth of the world. Americans had learned how to ride the power engine that was the printed word. As kings and kingdoms vanished, presidents and prime ministers took over the realm of the land. It was their turn.

Now as the third millennium prepares to unveil new turmoil, prime ministers and presidents are unable to sway populations no longer controlled by fear. From sources so new that governments can hardly learn of their existence, before citizens use new technologies to overcome or bypass the rigid hierarchal columns of command dictated by linear type.

Television is but one of the powerful new media. Computer screens, capable of producing rapidly moving scenes in 16.8 million colors and transferable to paper or screen of any size almost instantly to any corner of the world in synchronized color and form, is already here. Japan recently showed how to create a mirage and turn spectators into participants by wrapping their forward, overhead, side and lower vision into a magic carpet ride through a transparent floor. Holographic projections will soon be released. Electronic "trips" of artificial reality may make even the illicit drug trade follow the path of Lydia Pinkham's pills.

Nations created in an environment of mechanized type cannot be sustained as the media of that day loses dominance. Governments today cannot do what governments in the early days of type were set up to do, just as early tribes and kingdoms faltered when oral and handwritten communication faded.

The mixmaster that is time and space is generating unseen and unknown forces on all continents. As the ancient Chinese ideagraph depicting chaos alongside this column shows, it is a time of danger and opportunity.

Are you scared or excited? Will you flower or fade?

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