Remember these? When overhearing someone else's banal phone conversation was due to the limits and logistics of telecommunication? And not the proliferation of such (when you could choose to avoid the chitter and din of someone recalling last night's bar-scene, simply by avoiding the phonebank). This is Paul Newman in The Verdict. Circa 1977, Boston-- the waste cans a few feet out of frame are still wrapped in grubby bicentennial banners. The art direction is grande. It shows how frayed and derelict and homespun our world was. How real and tactile.

The internet as bulletin board.

This reminds me of that great bit in Spaulding Grey's Swimming to Cambodia where he talks about the antiquated Soviet Submarine communications (metal tubes closing the audible gaps) as compared to our superior (U.S.) technology. How in the tinny crackle of the soviet tubes, when soldiers communicate with each other, each side can hear the other's fear and anguish in their comrade's voices. How the humanity is stripped from our communiques in our quest for technical proficiency-- and it's impossible to gauge the true emotional timbre at the other end of the line. Not that we didn't have issues with land-based lines... but the fact that everyone seems to be holding a cellphone to their ear or in front of their face at every available moment. Something about the fact that it seems as if no one can stand to be alone with their thoughts for more than a nanosecond.

The sad fall-out of our on-demand talk-to-me-tell-me-twitter-me-text-me storm of contact is that reaching out and touching someone.. has simply lost its specialness.