Many analysts have been misled by electric media because of the seeming ability of these media to extend man's spatial powers of organization. Electric media, however, abolish the spatial dimension, rather than enlarge it. By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale. It is a relation in depth, and without delegation of functions or powers. The organic everywhere supplants the mechanical. Dialogue supersedes the lecture. The greatest dignitaries hobnob with youth. When a group of Oxford undergraduates heard that Rudyard Kipling received ten shillings for every word he wrote, they sent him ten shillings by telegram during their meeting: "Please send us one of your very best words." Back came the word a few minutes later: "Thanks." The hybrids of electricity and the older mechanics have been numerous. Some of them, such as the phonograph and the movie, are discussed elsewhere in this volume. Today the wedding of mechanical and electric technology draws to a close, with TV replacing the movie and Telstar threatening the wheel. A century ago the effect of the telegraph was to send the presses racing faster, just as the application of the electric spark was to make possible the internal-combustion engine with its instant precision. Pushed further, however, the electric principle everywhere dissolves the mechanical technique of visual separation and analysis of functions. Electronic tapes with exactly synchronized information replace the old lineal sequence of the assembly line. Acceleration is a formula for dissolution and breakdown in any organization. Since the entire mechanical technology of the Western world has been wedded to electricity, it has pushed toward higher speeds. All the mechanical aspects of our world seem to probe toward self-liquidation. The United States had built up a large degree of central political controls through the interplay of the railway, the post office, and the newspaper. In 1848 the Postmaster General wrote, in his report, that