“Some complain that e-mail is impersonal — that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.” — Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (pg. 800)