ABSTRACT
In a rueful passage in Civilization and its Discontents (first published in 1930), Sigmund Freud lamented the way in which mechanical transport in the twentieth century allowed families to drift apart, something which for him was only partly mitigated by the possibility of keeping in touch electronically:
Is there, then, no positive gain in pleasure, no unequivocal increase in my feeling of happiness, if I can, as often as I please, hear the voice of a child of mine who is living hundreds of miles away …? [But] if there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child never would have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice …
(quoted in Fischer, 1992, p. 15)