On Further Evidence to Corroborate

"Telephones are, without question, useful devices. But they are also, it seems to me, the verbal equivalent of houses without toilets. Telephones allow minds to communicate with minds (or tongues with ears, at least) in clarity or turmoil, in semisomnolence or drunkenness, in lust, joy, hysteria, stupefaction or any other state that fails to render a human physically incapable of holding up a quarter-pound chunk of perforated plastic--which is most every state there is. That telephones can connect us in seconds to any creature on earth foolhardy enough to lift its own chunk of plastic is wonderful. But it's also terrible, given what a lot of people think and feel about each other. That's why, until they're equipped with some sort of flush or filter or wast-disposal system for the billions of words that ought not to be spoken, I'll not trust the things."

--Kincaid Chance in the novel The Brothers K

This is just one more reason why telephones (and even more so cell phones) are overrated contraptions whose capacity for evil is rarely understood completely.