A given technology can lead to very different effects in different mediaspheres, as the invention of printing attests. Although wood-block printing first developed in China, it did not evolve into moveable type, presumably because it was more appropriate to a calligraphic tradition. In Europe, however, wood-block printing appears to have led almost inevitably to our Gutenberg culture of typesetting and print shop.

Each technical step forward means a compensating step backward in our mind-sets. Islamic fundamentalists don't come from the traditional universities deeply rooted in a literary educational system; they graduate from engineering schools and technical colleges.

Last century, some futurologists foresaw the end of national wars under the influence of spreading railroad lines and electrical telegraphy; others believed that industrialization would wipe out religious superstition. An imbalance in technologies tends to provoke a corresponding refocusing on ethnic values.