Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com

• I AM seriously concerned that new technology has triggered a change of direction in our evolutionary progress as humans.

For the vast majority of us the spoken word is being phased out of our everyday interactional behaviour and replaced by txt msgs which have rendered old folk like me more or less mute.

Once we got telephones in the 1960s, long and frequently fatuous calls were something that gave us pleasure and comfort.

My guess is that txts on mobile phones will one day be replaced by each of us having an endless supply of virtual speech bubbles floating above our heads expressing our wishes and innermost feelings.

However that will not be the end of the spoken word. That will finally be entirely confined to the place where even now it is most heard – namely coming out of our televisions.

The endless (and frequently fatuous) monologues and dialogues are ever more a source of displeasure and discomfort. Is this progress? IMHO it is not!

CT MARKS,
NW5