Thus, it takes some digging to get at them, to grasp, for example, that a clock re-creates time as an independent, mathematically precise sequence; that writing recreates the mind as a tablet on which experience is written; that the telegraph re-creates news as a commodity. And yet, such digging becomes easier if we start from the assumption that in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself. It has been pointed out, for example, that the invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century not only made it possible to improve defective vision but
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