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WORLD I Jan. 1999, pp. 24-37 This article appeared in the January 1999 issue and is reprinted with permission from THE WORLD I, a publication of the WASHINGTON TIMES Corporation, copyright (c) 1999. FROM MOVABLE TYPE TO DATA DELUGE by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas Instant, Global News and the Hypertext Web Are Carrying Us into Realms of Information Access That Alter Knowledge Foundations Laid by Gutenbergs Printing Technology. ????? Marshall McLuhan--the pundit best known for his slogan the medium is the message-described the information age as an age of all-at-onceness, in which space and time are overcome by television, jets, and computers. In such an all-at-once world, linear, cause-effective thinking processes give way to a discontinuous integral consciousness, so that points of view and specialist goals are replaced by an overall awareness of the mosaic world of a retribalized society. McLuhans seminal work, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, was written in the early sixties. Its time to ask whether he was right: Is the modern world more all-at-once than ever?  It would certainly seem so. The media world that existed in McLuhans time can now be remembered as almost genteel. Back then, in the United States there were just three TV networks and an orderly schedule of mass-consumption shows like ED SULLIVAN and I LOVE LUCY; now, thanks (if thanks is the right word) to cable, satellite, and computer networks, we are given all news all the time, all comedy all the time, all MTV all the time, all shopping all the time, all anything you want all the time. Could anything be more all-at-once than that?  Correct answer: yes. The digital revolution, with its glut of evermore compelling and evermore intrusive (and less apparent) technologies, continues to develop at the frenetic pace of Moores law (the accurate prediction by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that microprocessor power will double every 18 months). And things will get even worse (or even better, if you prefer).