ABSTRACT
Verbal and visual communications have prospered since the industrial revolution. Each new channel has been interpreted as a threat to the existing network, but, so far, new techniques have increased, not reduced, choice. The cinema did not kill the theatre and TV has not killed the cinema. Today we all have access to more messages than a Roman Emperor. But the communications revolution has its enemies, who would restrict the number of channels and censor the messages sent along them. These critics act on the assumption that there was a Golden Age of Communications when there was just the right number of books for a man to master, and the audience was a compact group in substantial agreement about cultural standards. In the 20th century, the situation seems to them too much, too wide.
