When two people sit down to speak with each other, they naturally tend to enter into relationship with one another. When we cease to use our gift of speech as our primary way of knowing – deferring to more remote systems of mediating reality such as writing, texting, or seeing – we place another layer between our external and internal knowing. Superficial relationships are those that stay on the periphery of each individual; the intimate ones are born from a desire to mine the riches of another’s soul. Our ability to know another person is directly related to our ability to be with that person – within earshot – communicating via the spoken word rather than through the mere exchange of text on a page or a screen. 

Before electronic media, print, or writing, there was speech.