Is the phone dead?

No, not the pocket computer with which you send text messages, read e-mail, listen to music, play games, and check the time. I mean the device with which you hold a synchronous conversation with another person.

In a recent New York Times article, Pamela Paul observed that few people make telephone calls anymore. And I note that, increasingly, my students think I’ve lost my grip on reality when I suggest that they could have dealt with their my-dog-ate-my-Internet problem (which precluded them from doing homework, studying, completing the assignment…) by telephoning a classmate for assistance.

Perhaps in a world in which people Big Brother themselves with social media, the notion of actually talking to someone who’s not physically present is culturally abnormal. In Isaac Asimov’s classic The Robots of Dawn, the denizens of planet Aurora, the innermost planet orbiting Tau Ceti, have refined their dislike of physical presence to the extreme: they interact exclusively through technology, finding sickening the idea of being in the same room—breathing the same air!—as another person.

Is the phone dead? For many of my students, the answer is yes!