读麦讲演作为在电子时代里的继续生存的艺术（1973）008

　　When the ancient Greeks invented visual space by a very peculiar technology called the phonetic alphabet, they fissioned off the visual sense from the other senses, abstracted it from the other senses. And this was done because the phonetic alphabet is phonemic, the only alphabet in the world that is phonemic, not morphemic, that is, the bits of the phonetic alphabet have no meaning. They’re phonemes. All other alphabets in the world have meanings. The letters have morphemic meanings. The technology of the phonetic alphabet had this amazing result of fissioning off the visual sense and giving us what is called rational space, Euclidean space, continuous, connected space.
　　当古希腊人通过一种非常特殊的被称为语音字母的技术来发明视觉空间的时候，他们将视觉从其他感官之间分离出来，从其他感官中抽象出来。这之所以得以完成，是因为语音字母代表了音位差异，是世界上惟一一种音素的而非语素的字母表，也就是说，语音字母的小片段都不包含意义。它们是音素。世上所有其他种类字母都有含义。字母都有语素意义。语音字母技术有如此惊人的效果，把视觉分裂出来，给了我们所谓的理性空间，欧几里得空间，连续而连接的空间。
　　按： 字符技术，无论语音字母还是象形文字，都把视觉从联觉通感中分离出来、抽象出来，用几千年的时间拓展出理性空间来。
　　从字符的发展史来看，与音素对应的是轮廓线条或边旁部首，而非语素，这二者为千百年来的兼并融合提供了空间，语素乃至语义是在兼并融合中交流形成的。