Means of Communication, Society, Psyche

The effects on society and its members of a change in the predominant Means of Communication can be observed in the case of Gutenberg's invention.  By making the Bible universally available, social hierarchies based on privileged access to those scriptures are levelled. Furthermore, with the books now available to each member of a society, the dissemination of the contents of those no longer requires a collective setting, and, thus, becomes a private experience, much like the fate of the cinema as a result of the development of the DVD.  In other words, two of the cardinal characteristics of Modern life--political democratization and psychological privatization, can be traced to a change in the predominant Means of Communication.  Now, entailed by Psychological Privatization are Phenomenalism, Egoism, and Atomism, so, the irony of, or, perhaps, the internal contradiction in, that influence of Gutenberg's invention is that it cannot be recognized as such, since, according to Atomism, Communication, as external to the personal Psyche, cannot alter it.