b'the authoritative source of information concerning Satanism, and it is credited as having contributed significantly to a witch frenzy and the widespread notion that women were more inclined to be witches than men. One historian writes, The swift propagation of the witch hysteria by the press was the first evidence that Gutenberg had not liberated man from original sin. 15Whatever we think about the realness or fakeness of either of these early books, there is a larger point to be considered about the funda-mental role information technology plays in modernity:It was the first great consumer age. So with print Europe experi-enced its first consumer phase, for not only is print a consumer medium and commodity, but it taught men how to organize all other activities on a systematic lineal basis. It showed men how to create markets and national armies. . .Print is the technology of individualism. . .Typography tended to alter language from a means of perception and exploration to a portable commodity. 16Printed text seems more real than orally transmitted myth. Doing the numbers seems more real than direct experience. General Mills seems more real than Four Season Farm. Confusion about the fake and the real has been stirred up anew, and with more virulence than ever, by todays arguments about wearing face masks and the eruption of skepticism about science, professional elites and federal agencies: 15 Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Jeffrey Burton Russell (Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 23416 The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan (University of Toronto Press, 1962), pp. 138-16165'