Electronic media are reshaping our understanding of what texts are, how they produce meaning, and how verbal forms affect society and culture. The 2005 Wiggins Lecture examines common assumptions about the history of verbal technologies and offers new ways of thinking about the emergent properties of textual media. Contrasting the printed medium with the allegedly static forms of oral performance and manuscript, media histories often focus on print as an emerging technology and an agent of social change. An alternative to print-driven media history, considers how theories of technology and history are bound up with the ways that we talk about textual forms and suggests a perspective that better accounts for the complex evolution of verbal culture.