Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path puts forward the notion that this is really an allegory for the adoption of the phonetic alphabet. Prior to this, all the dif

Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path puts forward the notion that this is really an allegory for the adoption of the phonetic alphabet. Prior to this, all the different language speakers could communicate with a symbolic system of writing, but once the phonetic alphabet was adopted they were no longer able to communicate in writing without knowing the reader's language.