"televox," or "telewisher," while familiar forms also appear     in a variety of transformed "messes of mottage," such as     "velivision" and "dullaphone."  This complex verbal play all     hinges on the inter-translatability of the emerging forms of     technologically mediated communication.  In the opening     episode of the second part, the "Feenicht's Playhouse," an     imaginary play produced by HCE's children in their nursery     is "wordloosed over seven seas crowdblast in     cellelleneteutoslavzendlatinsoundscript.  In four     tubbloids" (219.28-9).  Like the cinema, "wordloosed"     (wirelessed but also let loose) transglobally, all such     media are engaged in a "crowdblast" of existing languages     and cultures, producing an interplay between local cultures     and a pan-international hyperculture.[18]      In the concluding moments of the _Wake_, Joyce     generalizes his pre-cybernetic vision in one long intricate     performance that not only concerns the book itself, but also     anticipates by twenty years some major discussions of     culture, communication, and technology.  A brief scene     setting: this is the moment in the closing episode just as     the HCE is awakening.  In the background he hears noises     from the machines in the laundry next door.  It is breakfast     time and there are sounds of food being prepared; eggs are     being cooked and will be eaten, so there is anticipation of     the process of digestion that is about to take place.^25^     At this moment a key passage, inviting interminable     interpretation, presents in very abstract language a     generalized model of production and consumption, which is     also the recorso of the schema of this nocturnal poem, that     consumes and produces, just as the digestive system itself     digests and produces new cells and excrement--how else could     one be a poet of "litters" as well as letters and be     "litterery" (114.17; 422.35) as well as literary?[19]      The passage begins by speaking about "our wholemole     millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradomational     gazebocroticon," which may be the book, a letter to be     written, the digestive system assimilating the eggs, the     sexual process, the mechanical "mannormillor     clipperclappers" (614.13) of the nearby Mannor Millor     laundry, the temporal movement of history, or a theory of     engineering, for essentially it relates the production of     cultural artifacts or the consumption of matter (like     reading a book, seeing a film or eating eggs; the text     mentions a "farmer, his son and their homely codes, known as     eggburst, eggblend, eggburial, and hatch-as-hatch-can"     (614.28)).  The passage concludes, "as sure as herself     pits hen to paper and there's scribings scrawled on eggs"     (615.9-10).  Here the frequent pairing of speaking     (writing) with eating is brought to a climax in which it is     related to all the abstract machines which shape the life of     nature, decomposing into "bits" and recombining.[20]      These bits, described as "the dialytically [dialectic +     dialysis] separated elements of precedent decomposition,"     may be eggs, or other "homely codes" such as the     "heroticisms, catastrophes and ec-centricities" (the stuff     of history or the dreamers stuttering speech or his     staggering movements) transmitted elementally, "type by     tope, letter from litter, word at ward, sendence of sundance     . . ." (614.33-615.2).  All of these bits--matter, eggs,     words, TV signals, concepts, what you will--are     "anastomosically assimilated and preteri-dentified     paraidiotically," producing "the sameold gamebold adomic     structure . . . as highly charged with electrons as     hophazards can effective it" (615.5-8).  In anticipation of     the contemporary electronic definition of the "bit," Joyce     associates the structure of communication (ranging from TV     and telegraphic signals to morphophonemic information and     kinesthesia) with bits of signals, "data" and information.     He presents it as essentially an assemblage of     multiplicities, different from a synthesizing or totalizing     moment, for it occurs by the crossing of pluralistic     branches of differing motifs, through a process of     transmission involving flows, particularly the flowing of     blood, water and speech, and breaks such as the     discontinuous charges of electrical energy, telegraphy, and     punctuation--those "endspeaking nots for yestures" (267.8).[21]      Here Joyce's entire prophetic, schizoid vision of     cyberspace seems somewhat Deleuzian.  It is an ambivalent     and critical vision, for the "ambiviolence" of the     "langdwage" throughout the _Wake_ implies critique as it     unfolds this history, since Joyce still situates parody     within satire.  He does not free it from socio-political     reference, as a free-floating "postmodernist" play with the     surface of signifiers would.  This can be noted in the way     that Joyce first probes what came to be one of the keystones     of McLuhanism.  Joyce plays throughout the work with spheres     and circles, some of which parody one of the mystical     definitions of God frequently attributed to Alan of Lille     (Alanus de Insulis), but sometimes referred to as Pascal's     sphere.  Speaking of a daughter-goddess figure, he says:          our Frivulteeny Sexuagesima to expense herselfs as          sphere as possible, paradismic perimutter, in all          directions on the bend of the unbridalled, the          infinisissimalls of her facets becoming manier and          manier as the calicolum of her umdescribables (one has          thoughts of that eternal Rome) . . . .  (298.27-33)     Here a sphere is imagined whose center is everywhere and     circumference nowhere, since it is infinitesimal and     undescribable (though apparently the paradigmic perimeter is     sexual), as the paradisal mother communicates herself     without apparent limit.  This is both an embodied and a     disembodied sphere, polarizing and decentering the image so     as to impede any closure.  The same spherical principle is     applied more widely to the presentation of the sense of     hearing.  The reception of messages by the hero/ine of the     _Wake_, "(Hear! Calls! Everywhair!)" (108.23), is     accomplished by "bawling the whowle hamshack and wobble down     in an eliminium sounds pound so as to serve him up a     melegoturny marygoraumd" (309.22-4), a sphere for it     requires "a gain control of circumcentric megacycles"     (310.7-8).  It can truly be said of HCE, "Ear! Ear! Weakear!     An allness eversides!" (568.26),^26^ precisely because he is     "%h%uman, %e%rring and %c%ondonable"(58.19), yet "humile,     commune and ensectuous" (29.30), suffering many deprivations     his "%h%ardest %c%rux %e%ver" (623.33) [italics mine].     Though "humbly to fall and cheaply to rise, [this]     exposition of failures" (589.17) living with "%H%einz %c%ans     %e%verywhere"(581.5), still protests his fate "making use of     sacrilegious languages to the defect that he would     %c%hallenge their %h%emosphores to %e%xterminate them"     (81.25) by decentering or dislocating any attempts to     enclose him.[22]      This discussion of sphere and hearing critically     anticipates what McLuhan later called "acoustic space"--a     fundamental cyberspatial conception with its creation of     multi-dimensional environments, a spherical environment     within which aural information is received by the CNS--that     also embodies a transformation of the hermetic poetic     insight that "the universe (or nature) [or in earlier     versions, God] is an infinite sphere, the center of which is     everywhere, the circumference nowhere."^27^  Today, VR, as     Borges' treatment of Pascal's sphere seems to imply, is     coming to be our contemporary pre-millennial epitome of this     symbol, a place where each participant (rather than *the*     deity), as microcosm, is potentially the enigmatic center.     People englobed within virtual worlds find themselves     interacting within complex, transverse, intertextual     multimedia forms that are interlinked globally through     complex, rhizomic (root-like) networks.[23]      All of this must necessarily relate back to the way     Joyce treats the subject of and produces the artifact that     is *the book*.  While, beginning with Mallarme, the themes     of the book and the death of literature resound through     modernism, Joyce's transformation of the book filtered     through the "mcluhanitic" reaction to "mcluhanism" becomes,     in the usual interpretation of McLuhan, the annunciation of     the death of the book, *not* its transformation, as with     Joyce.  Joyce is important, for following Marcel Jousse and     Vico,^28^ he situates speech and writing as modes of     communication within a far richer and more complex bodily     and gestural theory of communication than that represented     by the reductive dichotomy of the oral and the literate.  As     the predominance of print declines, the _Wake_ explores the     history of communication by comically assimilating the     method of Vico's _The New Science_--which, as one of the     first systematic and empirical studies of the place of     poetic action in the history of how people develop systems     of signs and symbols, attributes people's ability for     constructing their society to the poetic function.[24]      Joyce avoids that facile over-simplification of the     complexities of print, arising from the orality/literacy     dichotomy, which attributes a privileged role to language as     verbal--a privilege based on theological and metaphysical     claims.  The same dichotomy creates problems in discussing     technological and other non-verbal forms of mediated     communication, including VR and TV.  At one point in the     _Wake_ "Television kills telephony in brothers' broil.  Our     eyes demand their turn.  Let them be seen!" (52.18-9), for     TV also comprehends the visual and the kinesthetic.  Yet     most McLuhanites who have opted for the orality/literacy     split still call it an oral medium in opposition to print.     The same problem occurs when mime, with its dependence on     gesture and rhythm, is analyzed as an oral medium.  As the     _Wake_ jocularly observes:          seein as ow his thoughts consisted chiefly of the          cheerio, he aptly sketched for our soontobe second          parents . . . the touching seene.  The solence of that          stilling!  Here one might a fin fell.  Boomster          rombombonant!  It scenes like a landescape from Wildu          Picturescu or some seem on some dimb Arras, dumb as          Mum's mutyness, this mimage . . . is odable to os          across the wineless Ere no dor nor mere eerie nor liss          potent of suggestion than in the tales of the          tingmount.  (52.34-53.6)     The mime plays with silence, sight, touch and movement     seeming like a landscape or a movie.[25]      Facile over-simplification also overlooks that long     before the beginnings of the trend towards cyberspace, print     had not been strictly oriented towards linearity and     writing, for the print medium was supplemented by its     encyclopedic, multi-media nature, absorbing other media such     as illustrations, charts, graphs, maps, diagrams, and     tables, not all aspects of which are precisely linear.     While writing may have had a predominantly linear tendency,     its history is far more complex, as Elizabeth Eisenstein has     established.^29^  The orality/literacy distinction does not     provide an adequately rich concept for dealing with print,     any more than it does for the most complex and comprehensive     images of virtual reality and participatory hyperspace     (e.g., sophisticated extensions of the datagloves or the     Aspen map), which, to adapt a Joycean phrase, directly     transmit "feelful thinkamalinks."  Since VR should enable a     person to feel the bodily set of another person or place,     while simultaneously receiving multiple intersensory     messages, understanding the role of the body in     communication is crucial for understanding VR.  When McLuhan     and Edward Carpenter first spoke about their concept of     orality (linked to aurality, mouth to ear, as line of print     to eye scan), it entailed recognizing the priority and     primacy of tactility and inter-sensory activity in     communication, for "In the beginning there was the gest."[26]      As Kenneth Burke realized in the 30s, Joyce's grounding     communication and language in gesture is distinctly     different from an approach which privileges language, for it     involves a complete embodying of communication.  While the     oral only embodies the speech organs, the entire CNS is