The American body, my friend explained, is an aggregation of man and machine. The latest addition to it is the computer. Very soon, a body not seated in front of a blinking screen can be considered as ill as a body outside of a car. My Martian friend, who has been a passionate observer of Homo Americanus since the nineteenth century, foresees a day when all newly born humans will have a plug inserted in the small of their back.

There is no doubt that the new symbiosis has occurred. . . .

Andrei Codrescu, "The New Body"

I've had it with the telephone. This impertinent object, with its abominable timing, rings only in the midst of your most intimate moments. The telephone is to tenderness what a hammer is to an egg. It has regard neither for you nor your silences. It has, in fact, succeeded in making us jumpy and fearful, rarely out of reach of its cord, that leash by which we stand attached to the impersonal meanness out there.

The worst things I have ever heard—such as the death of a friend—have come to me via the telephone. I find myself looking at it in superstitious awe as it stands perched there, seeming to demand human sacrifices. This bearer of mostly bad news has succeeded since its invention in transforming homo sapiens into homo interruptus.

It stands accused also of murdering the elegance of human communication. Writing letters, an activity of the hand that used to connect intelligence to affection and subtlety, has all but disappeared under its brutal buzz.

Andrei Codrescu, A Craving for Swan

Human beings are in the process of being radically redesigned. It would be unfair to apply old European standards to the new creatures we are becoming. I do not lament the passing of the unconscious. It had already been trivialized out of existence by the mid-sixties. Psychedelics dealt it further blows. Self-improvement techniques bypassed it altogether. Television finished it off. We are new beings now. We don't need an unconscious. We are unconscious.

Andrei Codrescu, "The Death of the Unconscious"