n North America technology is not only artifact but actor; or, as I put it later, it is machines that have teleological insight. The latest in technology is always the occasion of metaphysical voyages outward in space but backward in time: a journey of restoration as much as of progress.

In this fragile society technology and communication, then, created the hope of economic, political, and cultural unity. Small markets thinly spread in space could be integrated into one large market capable of efficient exploitation. Small political units thinly dispersed in space could be collected into one political organism. Small cultural enclaves thinly dispersed over a continent could be collected into one great community. But the same technology and geography that inspired the hope stimulated the fear: the entire experiment could descend into factionalism or, worse, contagions of demagogic enthusiasm. The lines of communication that transmitted a common culture and cemented the union could be run backward: a nervous system in reverse might collect antidemocratic energies, mass movements, and primitive enthusiasms in the provinces and concentrate them in the capitals. The hope and fear are the systolic and diastolic beats of the culture.

James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: E…, loc. 71770