Monday 1 August 2016

ticker-tape

The always interesting Public Domain Review shows us that the isolating, estranging effects of technology were Zeitgeisty (yes, I said Zeitgeisty having heard it uttered by a BBC Radio 4 correspondent—the language we pick up…) back in 1906 Britain, as Punch magazine—which I never realised that Punch was subtitled the London Charivari—lampoons. Though this forecast for the state of affairs of the upcoming year is in jest, the man and woman fixated on their telegraph-feed rather than each other or their surroundings is pretty prescient and shows that concerns about socially authentic cohesion is not the exclusive bailiwick of our age.