When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is

Host: The rain had been falling for hours — soft, endless, like a kind of forgetfulness. Inside a small apartment, half-lit by the cold glow of a laptop screen, Jack sat at the table, scrolling through messages that never quite became conversations. The blue light flickered across his face, painting his eyes in a pale shade of fatigue. Across the room, Jeeny stood near the window, her phone in her hand, her reflection framed against the night — a ghost made of pixels and memory.

Host: Outside, the city buzzed — distant sirens, faint music, the hum of unseen lives. Inside, there was only the silence of two people connected by Wi-Fi, disconnected by everything else.

Jeeny: “You ever read what Neil Postman said, Jack? ‘When two human beings get together, they’re co-present... You can’t just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.’”

Jack: “Yeah.” He didn’t look up from the screen. “Postman — the prophet of the media apocalypse. The guy who said we were amusing ourselves to death.”

Jeeny: “And weren’t we? Look at us now.” She held up her phone, its light trembling against her fingers. “You can block someone faster than you can breathe. You can end a connection without consequence. That’s what he meant. You can turn people off.”

Jack: “Or protect yourself. Ever think of that? The Internet gave people a way to control what hurts them. Out there—” he nodded toward the window, toward the dark streets below “—you don’t get to mute someone’s cruelty. Online, at least, you can.”

Host: The rain struck harder, scattering against the glass like thrown gravel. Jeeny’s reflection trembled in the pane, her eyes full of quiet fire.

Jeeny: “Control isn’t connection, Jack. It’s fear. You call it protection, but what we’ve built is isolation — a world where empathy has a ‘log out’ button.”

Jack: “And you think it’s empathy to force people to endure everything? Every argument, every outrage, every heartbreak? The Internet didn’t destroy empathy — it exposed how little we had to begin with.”

Jeeny: “No.” Her voice softened. “It diluted it. Thinned it out until it became something performative — hearts, likes, and retweets masquerading as compassion. You can’t feel someone’s presence through emojis, Jack. Not really.”

Host: The room filled with the faint sound of a notification — that tiny digital chime that had come to replace the sound of a knock on a door. Jack’s eyes flicked toward it, instinctively, before turning back to her.

Jack: “You’re nostalgic for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. People are co-present all the time — video calls, streaming, social networks. We’ve just upgraded presence.”

Jeeny: “Upgraded?” She laughed — not mockingly, but with a sadness that felt like recognition. “Presence doesn’t upgrade, Jack. It either exists or it doesn’t. When you sit with someone, you feel their breath, their pauses, their hesitation before speaking. You sense them — not as data, but as pulse. You can’t replicate that with pixels.”

Jack: “Maybe not perfectly. But digital connection is still connection. My team works across three continents. We create together, think together. Isn’t that co-presence too — just evolved?”

Jeeny: “No. That’s coordination, not communion.”

Host: The lightning flashed across the sky, for an instant cutting their shadows in half — his drawn and angular, hers fluid and trembling.

Jeeny: “When you’re co-present, you carry a responsibility. You see the person you’re affecting. Their face, their silence, their reaction — it holds you accountable. Online, that accountability disappears. You can ghost, insult, cancel — all with a click. And when it’s done, there’s no consequence. You just turn them off.”

Jack: “Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe we need that ability. Think about it — toxic families, abusive relationships, endless manipulation. The Internet gave people a way out, a door that real life never offered.”

Jeeny: “So, you’d rather escape than engage?”

Jack: “I’d rather choose.”

Host: The air in the room felt charged — not from the storm, but from something sharper, more human. Jeeny set her phone down, as if the weight of the device itself had become unbearable.

Jeeny: “You know what terrifies me? That we’re losing the courage to face each other. Every message, every post, it’s filtered — rehearsed, delayed, deleted. We used to speak, Jack. Now we curate.”

Jack: “We’ve always curated. You think people in face-to-face conversations don’t wear masks? The only difference now is that the mask glows in the dark.”

Jeeny: Quietly. “At least the masks used to sweat.”

Host: That line hung in the air like a whisper between thunderclaps. Jack froze for a moment, the screen light dying on his face as he closed the laptop.

Jack: “So what do you want, Jeeny? For everyone to throw away their phones and sit in silence again? We can’t go back.”

Jeeny: “I don’t want to go back. I just want us to remember. That there’s a heartbeat behind every message. That there’s a real person on the other side who can’t just be turned off like an app.”

Jack: “You think people forget that?”

Jeeny: “Every day.”

Host: The rain slowed, soft now, almost tender. The streetlights blurred through the window, streaks of white and amber bending across her face.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. I mean… sometimes I scroll through my feed and see people arguing — viciously — and I wonder if they’d say the same things if they were standing in front of each other.”

Jeeny: “They wouldn’t. Because the face softens what words harden. You can’t scream at someone who’s crying in front of you.”

Jack: “Unless you’re incapable of feeling it.”

Jeeny: “And that incapability, Jack — that’s what we’re training ourselves into. A world where we can just close the tab instead of confronting the human behind it.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked softly, marking seconds like falling rain. The storm had moved farther away, leaving a faint hum in its wake — like an echo of something that had almost mattered.

Jack: “Maybe we just need new rules. Digital ethics, empathy training, humane design — whatever you want to call it. We can make the Internet human again.”

Jeeny: “You can’t make it human. You can only make humans remember they are.”

Host: Jack looked at her, really looked — not through pixels, not through profile pictures, but through the simple reality of presence. The light from a nearby lamp caught the edge of her hair, turning it into a quiet flame.

Jack: “You sound like Postman himself.”

Jeeny: “He was right before we knew he was right. He warned us — that the more we communicate through machines, the less we understand each other’s humanity. It’s not the Internet that’s the danger, Jack. It’s our comfort with distance.”

Jack: “But distance gives perspective.”

Jeeny: “No. It gives permission. To disconnect. To disappear. To forget.”

Host: The words landed with the weight of truth. Jack’s fingers twitched as if reaching for the keyboard — then stopped. He looked instead at the coffee mug, half empty, a thin film of reflection quivering on its surface.

Jack: “You know what’s funny? We’ve never talked like this when we’re texting. Not once.”

Jeeny: “Because we can turn off the silence there.”

Jack: “And here?”

Jeeny: “Here, it listens back.”

Host: The apartment seemed to breathe then — walls alive with the rhythm of two human beings finally co-present, even if the air between them was filled with past neglect.

Jack: “So what do we do, Jeeny? Keep showing up? Keep being… inconveniently human?”

Jeeny: Smiling faintly. “Yes. Keep showing up. Keep staying when it’s awkward, when it’s messy. Don’t just click away. Don’t just turn people off.”

Jack: “That’s hard.”

Jeeny: “It’s supposed to be. That’s what makes it real.”

Host: The rain had stopped completely. The city outside shimmered under the afterglow of its own reflections. Jack closed his laptop, and the room filled with something strange — the sound of pure, unmediated silence.

Jeeny: “See? That’s presence.”

Jack: Whispering. “Feels… heavier than I remembered.”

Jeeny: “That’s because it’s alive.”

Host: And for the first time in a long time, the screen was dark, the room full, and the connection — truly — human. The camera would fade slowly, pulling back through the window, into the city’s pulse, into the world of voices that shimmered behind glass — each one calling out, waiting not to be turned off, but to be seen.