Fire and Knowledge

Wouldn’t we say that the word cannot really exist outside the perception and translation by its reader? If this is the case, then the mode of transmission cannot be disregarded. The word cut into stone carries the implicit weight of the carver’s intention; it is decoded into sense under the aspect of its imperishability. It has weight, grandeur—it vies with time. The same word, when it appears on the [computer] screen, must be received with a sense of its weightlessness—the weightlessness of its presentation. The same sign, but not the same.

—Sven Birkets, The Gutenberg Elegies (1994), p. 155