[joe-frank-list] Arthur Miller and Tim Jerome predict 'techno-contact' in 'Lines'

[russellbell at gmail.com]

	Beginning about 14 minutes into 'Lines' Tim Jerome and Arthur
Miller expatiate on how people have better relationships at a
distance, over the telephone.  At 17:20:
	'More and more people are relying on the phone to communicate
on any level at all whether it is to do business, whether it's for
their social life, whether it's for their family, whether it's to buy
or sell things, ...  for their own entertainment, for sex also.
People seem to be relying more and more on just using the phone lines
to live their lives.  You have the cases of people who have phones in
their cars, phones in their wristwatches, phones built into their
underwear, phone implants in their ears...  '

	'People who find it more and more difficult to deal verbally
directly with somebody and even though their associates, their
colleagues, their family are in the same room with them they feel
compelled to call them in order to speak comfortably with them.
Whether it's good or bad for society only time will tell.  My
suspicion is that the more isolated we become it's as though
technology has turned around on itself and whereas technology
originally served to draw us together and it's in the sense of the
global village it seems as though it's turned back on itself and is
indeed separating us more than ever, discouraging people from making
human contact and encouraging nothing but techno-contact.'

	At 19:40 Arthur Miller describes a young man, 'when he put the
phone down he experienced a sense of disconnection, a sense of
isolation, that was so profound and so threatening to him that he took
to carrying a portable phone with him wherever he went.'

russell bell