This is a speech bubble from Supergirl & The Legion of Super-Heroes #17. Through a series of improbable events, Supergirl has traveled to the 31st Century and is in a bit of awe at how much things have changed. The above is part of a conversation explaining a bit of the culture. It’s a follow-up to a scene in issue 16 where a man is complaining about the Legion being so flagrant and he can’t get his neighbor to so much as look at him through an open front door, the neighbor instead continuing to address him on the visi-screen less than a foot away.

Aside from being a fun comic book moment, it’s an interesting thing to me because I’ve chatted with a few friends about the progression of communication. It seems that every new advance is more and more likely to keep us less interpersonally connected. Kids in schools have gone from secret codes and hand signals to passed notes and now text messages. As adults we maintained the notes and they evolved into letters and mail, but we discovered e-mail, texting and instant messages and it seems like those latter two rule the day. With one or two exceptions, I can’t recall the last time I got a phone call just to chat and generally when I call others I get the impression that I’m disturbing them. I know that a lot of people don’t care for talking on the phone and I accept that, but until we all develop telepathy, it’s a much better substitute for actual conversation than an online chat session.

Read the rest of this entry »