I heard it as "it's where you are when you're talking on the phone".



Anyway there is a really interesting and slippery slope going on as we transition more and more into "infomrational"transactions and less and less into organic transactions such as face-to-face smiles, handshakes, real hugs and real kisses.

The telephone started it, of course, but at least there was a direct analog link with sound waves very like ht eones ocming out of the sender's mouth.

My concern is that there is a huge rebalancing going on in which we are downgrading the gems of our pre-cyber civilization -- the art of letters, certain ways of doing research, ways of thinking about groups and nations, the rat eof putting out information, and the physical efforts once associated with operating a typewriter or fountain pen. All these and more are earmarks of a high plateau of literary and intellectual civilization in my lifetime, now seemingly swamped by blitzes of formats and speedy transfers and huge volumes of high-speed shallow analyses with little deeper impact.

I am also sure that the time will come when this whole lament of mine sounds as old-fashioned as Socrates resenting the introduction of writing because it degraded the use of memory. Hopelessly outdated sentimentalism. For the moment, it seems with the huge flood of blogs and mail and pages and images being slathered all over creation by any fool with a keyboard (present comapny included) we are paying a huge price in sacrificing the discipline and quality of the well-built phrase, the intense paragraph, the page that stirs. We have unleashed waves, and drowned wit in a mediocre tide.

A