“But already in the early mid-90s, long before the advent of smartphones, Zoom, and widely available VR headsets, Illich feared that the proliferation of screens1 was occluding the road to friendship that ran from eye to eye.2
The gaze of another is a gift, but it is admittedly a demanding gift that entails a measure of vulnerability. For this reason it is so easy to take all the exits on the road that leads from eye to eye offered by our screens. But when we consider, how much depends on it—on the loving gaze of a parent for a newborn child; on the patient, quiet gaze of a friend in a time of sorrow; on the gaze between strangers that honors and affirms the existence of the other…”