Support Blurbs to Today's Class

Two media items - or, 'journal articles on-line' -- following from today's lecture & discussion are the nostalgia-tinged story from the New York Times pace Marshall McLuhan on what I explain in terms of cocooning on the decline of the office telephone, (link courtesy J.R.) and this reflection on the 'information bomb' (which most of you are not, by show of hands, in fact experiencing):

The Joy of Boredom
Don't check that e-mail. Don't answer that phone. Just sit there. You might be surprised by what happens.
By Carolyn Y. Johnson
March 9, 2008
A DECADE AGO, those monotonous minutes were just a fact of life: time ticking away, as you gazed idly into space, stood in line, or sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic.....Increasingly, these empty moments are being saturated with productivity, communication, and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array of slick mobile devices. A few years ago, cellphone maker Motorola even began using the word "microboredom" to describe the ever-smaller slices of free time from which new mobile technology offers an escape.