In a satiric chapter of David Foster Wallace's novel "Infinite Jest," a mock media expert reports how American consumers of the near future recoil from a new communication device known as "videophony" and return to the voice-only telephone of the Bell Era. This article explores the said chapter in the framework of media theories reading the telephone as a "synecdoche of technology," considering Wallace's vision of videophony's rise and fall in a future society from two angles: It discusses the antitechnological bent of the chapter against the background of other visions of future media in 1990s American fiction and it foregrounds the segment's emphasis on solipsism as a destructive force in all forms of communication. The article argues that "Infinite Jest" moves beyond questions relevant only to the (video) telephone itself. Rather, Wallace's novel contrasts literary communication--complex, multilayered, at times monumental--with discourses and practices overly optimistic with regard to the facility of mediated interactions per se.