the bilateral illusion of unilateral attention — "it would be like being able…" · S3

The book's clearest account of why real contact is intolerable: the good old voice-only phone let each caller believe the other was fully present while paying almost no attention back, a mutual delusion that gratified precisely because it let you receive without returning. Stated flat, the arrangement is fantastic, "being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time," which is to say the basic contract of the telephone, and maybe of talk itself, runs on a comfortable illusion that only holds as long as no one has to actually be seen attending.