When I was young, you couldn’t get a machine when you called a human being. Only a business or institution. You -either- got a person’s voice, or nothing. No answer at all. Now, however, most calls are answered by a machine -emulating a human- or -a digitized recording of a human you do not know and will never meet-. And this matters more than we suppose. In fact, its effects covertly sabotage our ability to determine that it matters.