Week 6- Time and Distance Overcome

I was intrigued with this article as soon as I read the first paragraph. I thought it was so interesting when she used the line, "the world was not waiting for the telephone". That's  a different way to think of this invention, but also about all other inventions. Some people may say the world was waiting and other people may argue that it wasn't, as Biss says. The telephone enhanced communication, but was not necessary to human life. We don't "need" the telephone. That line made me think a lot. I also think the line two paragraphs after that says a lot. It reads, "Even now it is an impossible idea, that we are all connected, all of us". The whole point of the telephone was to connect the world and she's drawing attention to that, but the point she makes later in the essay shows the opposite effect. It appears as though the telephone poles allowed for racism to escalate to a whole new level, ripping the races farther apart, when the intention was always to bring people together. How disturbed and heartbroken Biss must feel about this and she emulates that feeling to the reader.