Dialogue 2.

ANNA The thing is, Richard, CD-ROMs are actually much better than books.

RICHARD Why's that?

ANNA Well, you can store so much more information on the disks. I mean, not just stories, but you can have pictures from galleries, you can have portraits from the Louvre in Paris or the National Gallery in London, there's so much...

RICHARD I have to disagree. I don't think anything will ever replace the book as a means of storing information in the way that you actually look through a book to find it, and when it comes to art, there's no substitute for the real thing. Nothing will replace a visit to Paris or London to see...

ANNA Of course not, but you can have it in your own home, can't you?

RICHARD I know, but people are always saying this. Every few years something comes along and everybody says, "Oh, this is the way of the future. This is going to replace..." I mean, a few years ago a friend convinced me that LPs and tapes were out, that CD-ROMs would replace them and that hasn't happened yet.

ANNA No.

RICHARD You see, there's nothing more convenient than a book, is there?

ANNA Well, 1 think you're a bit frightened of change, aren't you? 1 mean ... I expect you've got a fax machine, haven't you, but actually e-mail is far better because it s much faster than a fax machine. And I bet you thought you'd never have anything as advanced as a fax machine, but ...

RICHARD No. but yes, I use the fax, but I think E-mail is a rather expensive form of sending letters because you’ve got to pay the subscription to the company and everything, whereas ... .

ANNA Yeah ...

RICHARD … with a fax you're just paying for a simple phone call.

ANNA Yeah, I agree. And a fax is still a good way of sending visual information, such as drawings and diagrams. But, you know, a lot of people like to be … kind of ... contacted by e-mail.

RICHARD Really?

ANNA Yeah. Oh yeah!

RICHARD I can't believe that!

ANN It's quite a sociable thing, you know, because you can actually...

RICHARD I think it's much better to have a handwritten letter, surely?

ANNA Well …

RICHARD It sounds horribly cold to me.

ANNA Well, no ... not really, because you can be quite sociable, you can ... you know you can chat to people, rather than, you know ... you send something, somebody sends something back, you know, you can do an odd line here, an odd line there. It's good.

RICHARD No. I disagree I don't think it's very sociable to be contacted by e-mail and be talking to a computer screen. I mean, it's like talking to a robot.

ANNA Well. I think it's good to be connected to e-mail, because it is a very spontaneous way of communicating with people all over the world.

RICHARD What about the Internet? 1 mean, you're a huge fan of that, at the moment, aren't you?

ANNA Well. I am actually. 1 mean. I don't think it should be government controlled, because then, you know, you lose your freedom of speech, you lose...

RICHARD Well ... ,

ANNA . .your rights, you know...

RICHARD I can .see what you're saying, but I do believe there should be some control over the Internet, otherwise it could be used as a way of sending political propaganda, or pornography. There's a huge amount of pornography, and it goes to anyone with a computer. I think that's wrong.

ANNA Yeah ... there are a lot of people that are afraid of being censored by the government ... .

RICHARD Well, people are being censored right-now ... And … in lots of different ways. Why do we just use the Internet as an argument there?

ANNA I see your point, but what about TV then, what are your views on that? Because I think ... you know ... that if you can watch TV stations from anywhere in the world then obviously it's going to help you to find out about other cultures. You know, being connected to cable and satellite and TV isn't as expensive as you might imagine these days.

RICHARD No., but if there's a lot of satellite television coming in and it's all in different languages, it's not much use if ... because you won't understand it

ANNA Yes, I suppose so. But you can still look at the pictures!