Our society and culture, particularly our embedded and em erging information and communication systems, seem to be evolving gradually away from heavy reliance on visible alpha- numeric text toward more oral, auditory, and image-based com munication. Some librarians applaud this trend, while others lament it, somehow seeing in it the decline of Western civilization. In some ways, this trend represents the completion of a vast circle in the overall development of human culture, which originally emerged through heavy reliance on pictorial images, such as cave paintings, and on forms of oral communication, such as roving bards and troubadours.
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