Prehistoric humans survived by interpreting stimuli from all five senses. Touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell were all valuable tools that warned our ancestors of danger or alerted them to a hunting opportunity. Humans were “jacks-of-all-trades”, able to perform the variety of tasks required for survival. However, according to media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the creation of the alphabet disrupted the delicate balance of sensory input: “[In] the tribal world, the senses of touch, taste, hearing, and smell were developed, for very practical reasons, to a much higher level than the strictly visual. Into this world, the phonetic alphabet fell like a bombshell, installing sight at the head of the hierarchy of senses” (from McLuhan's Playboy interview).

A direct result of this new sensory equilibrium was the specialization of skills. As sight became the predominant sense, skills that relied heavily on sight became more widely used. Craftsmen would trade their wares for food and other necessities, and by specializing in a certain skill, they became better and better at it. Civilized societies were comprised of specialists who spent all their life working in one field. Books, and later magazines, radio, and other media came to work the same way; by categorizing information and organizing it into indexes such as the Dewey Decimal System. Media and humans followed a parallel route, as caste systems and bureaucratic governments developed.

The Twentieth Century began to bring some changes. Concerns over equality between races, genders, and classes arose. Corporations began to realize that with new technology, the assembly line and strict hierarchical models of management were less efficient than work teams and network management. Media followed suit, and new mediums such as the Internet began to declassify information. One of the first, and possibly the most influential, mediums to do this was television. Its audio/visual nature promoted equality of the masses: “Print created illiteracy. TV is democratic. Everybody gets it” (Moses Znaimer, TVTV: The Television Revolution). Now, with periodic additions of specialty cable stations, television is becoming less categorized with every introduction of a new channel.