读麦·讲演·在光速下生活（1974）·002

There is only one part of the world that ever did go visual, and that is the Western Greco-Roman Hellenistic world. About 500 B. C. something happened which made it possible to flip out of the old acoustic world, which was the normal one of the tribal Greek society, the Homeric world. Something happened which flipped them out of the old Homeric world of the bards into this new, rational, philosophically logical, connected, private, inpidualistic, civilized world. And that thing is called the phonetic alphabet. The origins of the phonetic alphabet are by no means clear at all. All we know is what it did to people.

全世界只有一个地区达到过视觉化，那就是西方希腊-罗马式的希腊化世界。大约公元前500年，发生了一件事，这使得跳出旧的听觉世界成为可能，听觉世界是部落式希腊社会——荷马风格的世界——中很平常的一种世界。发生了某个事物，使它们跳出了昔日吟游诗人的荷马世界，跳进这新的、理性的、哲学家似地合乎逻辑的、连接的、非公开的、追求个人的、文明的世界。发生的那个事物叫做语音字母。语音字母的起源根本不清楚。我们所知道的是它对人们的影响。

按：听觉文化在部落式希腊社会里很平常。希腊社会是以部落-城邦为单位组成的社会，类似于后来的邦联制，在希腊社会里，既有罗马式的视觉文化，也有口语部落的听觉文化。希腊世界中的听觉世界，这是万物各有其空间的注脚之一。

语音字母的起源不可知，单个字母起于青萍之末，在运用、传播、部落兼并融合的过程中变化和汇总，逐渐形成字母表。