"Everybody telephones everybody at every possible moment, and nobody can speak to anybody, signals go wandering up and down automatic search circuits, beating their wings like crazed butterflies, without managing to slip into a free line, each subscriber goes on firing off numbers into the exchanges convinced that it’s no more than a temporary local hitch. The truth is that the vast majority of calls are made without people having anything to say to each other, hence it hardly matters whether they get through or not, all they do is harm those few who really would have something to say."

― Italo Calvino (Before You Say ‘Hello’, Numbers in the Dark)