The invention and spread of writing seem historically to have been the especial cause of the development of symbolic communication media. Writing greatly widened the potential for communication in society beyond the interaction of people immediately present and thus removed it from control by concrete interaction systems. Without writing it is impossible to create complex power chains in political and administrative bureaucracies, let alone democratic control over political power.

XREF: Connects to themes in the history of media technology and how communication systems shape political structures, echoing arguments from Ong, Goody, and McLuhan about writing's transformative effects.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 590