Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

What Mr. King said there was brilliant. Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Deathand The Disappearance of Childhood. Before he died, he wrote Technopoly, which was a very interesting book on the rise of technology. He said that anything plugged in will not help one to become. I was very taken by it. It is exactly what the witnesses are saying as artists, practitioners, writers and philosophers. We need the human and the tactile; the touch, taste, smell and voice of the human being. People now make love without voices. They communicate "I love you", "I hate you" or "I want to meet you" without voice and they do not come with tone anymore. Nothing that is plugged in will help one to become. It was most interesting. Mr. Postman was not talking about music being plugged in; he was talking about what "technopoly" can close down in the human being.