by Mr. Owen Edwards
(THIS IS AMAZING!) -
Writing at the early part of the last century, Owen Edwards penned these 'prophetic' words about the phone:
"A dangerous new universe of communications threatens to ensnare us, one so seductive and insidious that it must be recognized for what it is: a web!
A web which, once we are trapped within it, will do nothing less thatn change the boundaries of human decency, decorum and behavior!
Do nothing less than change the way we speak, think and, yes, act!
And what is the spider weaving this web, which mesmerizes and even enslaves its users? The spider which has crept unchallenged into offices and homes?
The spider which, while promising extraordinary new avenues of discourse and delivery, has spun its web wider and wider and, yes world-wider?
It is Mr. Alexander Graham Bell's pernicious instrument, the telephone!
...Perhaps we should be grateful that these telephones are held in one place by their wires:
...lest those who have been ensnared by the illusion of incessant "communication" carry these devices everywhere, speaking to unseen listeners like madmen haunted by disembodied spirits.
If we solid Americans, guided by plain horse-sense, our traditional practicality and the unerring rules of good manners, rise up now against the spread of this insidious technology, such insanity will never engulf us."
HMM... Really Makes You Think.