The unassisted human voice which can reach at most a few dozen yards, imposes various conditions on a speaker. However, with the invention of the alphabet the voice was translated to a visual medium with the consequent loss of most of the qualities and effects. But its range in time and space was thus given enormous extension. At the same time the distance from the sender to the recipient of a message was extended, the number of those able to decipher the message was decreased. Writing, in other words, was a political revolution. It changed the nature of social communication and control.