In a literate culture our conception of meaning itself - whether of logical argument or magical narrative - depends on [a] radical act of typographical simplification. No pictures; no color; strict order of left to right then down one line; no type changes; no interaction; no revision. In attacking this convention, [the Futurist experiments of Filippo Tommaso] Marinetti attack[ed] the entire literate conception of humankind - the central self, a nondramatic society just out there waiting for us to observe it - and the purposive idea of language that rests upon it.

Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts

The struggle between icon and alphabet is not, to be sure, anything new, as the history of illuminated manuscripts attests. This complex interaction of word and image never actually vanished; it only fell out of fashion. The tradition of mixing transparent alphabetic information with opaque pictures formed by the letters go back at least to Simias, a Greek poet of the fourth century B.C. It was revived first by Marinetti and then by the Dadaists, with a specifically aggressive purpose. And, to some degree, it lurks in any calligraphic tradition. Electronic display both invites manipulating the icon/alphabet mixture and makes it much easier to write.

Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts

 

We needn't worry about digital determinism. We must explain, instead, the extraordinary convergence of twentieth-century thinking with the digital means that now give it expression. It is the computer as fulfillment of social thought that requires explanation.

Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts