Jacob Silverman’s excellent survey of the social network and its contemporary implications (Pics or it didn’t happen: How sharing our every moment became the new living, 26 February) prompts questions about how all this is compatible with the in-the-flesh, person-to-person, five-senses-experienced encounters that have evolved for thousands of years as the human norm. The replacement of real and audible voices, eye-to-eye contact, shared laughter (or tears) and physical presence by two-dimensional screens and electronic sounds may take years to have its effect. It may be no bad idea to consider what the longer-term effects of this atrophy of physical presence and the senses might be for future generations.
Ian Flintoff
Oxford
