Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact- phone calls, faxes, e-mail- wi… - Thomas Lewis

An ironic revelation of the television-computer age is that what people want from machines is humanity: stories, contact, and interaction.

The brevity of mini (psycho)therapies is another efficient forestaller of healing. The neocortex rapidly master didactic information, but the limbic brain takes mountains of repetition. No one expects to play the flute in six lessons or to become fluent in Italian in ten. (189)

Humanity began in a precarious world where tiny bands foraged and scrimped for food by day, huddled together for warmth by night. With the advent of agriculture came mass aggregation in towns and cities. The industrial revolution took work out of the home, making the populace “a mass of undifferentiated equals, working in a factory or scattered between the factories, the mines, and the offices, bereft forever of the feeling that work was a family affair, done within the household.” Economies prospered as families dissipated. In pursuit of further riches, the information age demands a more thoroughgoing surrender — less time for relationships, less time for children, more time for impersonal everything. Before our lives wither away into dust, we might ponder how much more prosperity human beings can possibly survive.