Postman: image-centred culture

It is quite likely that most of the first 15 Presidents of the United States would not have been recognised had they passed the average citizen in the street.  This would have been the case as well of the great lawyers, ministers and scientists of the era. To think about those men was to think about what they had written, to judge them by their public positions, their arguments, their knowledge as codified in the printed word.  You may get some sense of how we are separated from this kind of consciousness by thinking about our recent presidents;  or even preachers, lawyers and scientists who are or who have recently been public figures.  Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of a face, most likely a face on a television screen...  Of words almost nothing will come to mind.  This is the difference between thinking in a word-centred culture and thinking in an image-centred culture.  (p62)