Thus, even within the much lower bandwidths then available, significant quantities of (human-readable) symbolic representation could be transcribed and manipulated, all thanks to our 'byte-sized' alphabet and its particular traditions of literacy. In recent years, as the programmatons were networked, it was the same low-bandwidth/high-significance textual medium which enabled the net first to proliferate and then to set its rhizomes in the mulch of Media and popular culture.