This is kind of a peripheral point in the novel, but wouldn't something like mindspeech completely change a society? I can't think of more than a couple of scientific advancements in human history that have been anywhere close to as important to the nature of human interaction than that would be. The telepathy itself is cool, but not all that important. The part that matters is that it is impossible to lie. Of course, people could still speak lies, but how could they ever get away with it in anything important? Why would anyone sign a contract without asking to be told in mindspeach that his/her partner intended to honor it? No innocent person would ever be put in jail (at least by accident), and detective work would become fairly easy. The legal status of mindspeech might get a little complicated (would people be required to mind-testify about crimes? Could it be monitored, physically and legally? If that turned out to be impossible, how would the questioner's honesty be verified, etc.), but that is not really the most interesting question it would raise.
The social implications of mindspeach might, I think, go even deeper. I wonder if we would be able to handle a society where people could choose to prove their honesty at any point if they chose? Wouldn't we assume that anyone who did not want to mindspeak something he/she was saying was lying? If you told your girlfriend you loved her in mindspeach, and she answered in kind but in words, what would you think? There are two obvious directions such a society might go. In one, which the idealistic part of me wants to believe in, people would simply become utterly honest. There would be no true secrets, because even though not everything would be conveyed in mindspeach, there would always be the knowledge that one question could reveal anything. Because people understood that there were no secrets, maybe they would not get so offended about little things. Manners would more or less disappear over time, as honesty became a habit as well as a necessity.
These ideas do not even brush the surface of how deeply society would be changed, I think. An honest society would be almost recognizable in a lot of ways. But there is also the question of whether humans are capable of creatng such a culture of honesty, even with a tool like mindspeach. What I think is probably more likely is that strong taboos would be created against asking personal or prying questions, and against using mindspeach except in specialized circumstances (the military and law enforcement might fall in this category). I really am not sure what to think about this question, but for me the most interesting part of the book was its offhanded way of addressing this incredibly revolutionary technology. As I have argued, it seems like it would change human life in very fundamental ways. I would love to hear what other people think about this. Also, in deference to the subjects out class is supposed to be about, has anyone noticed that the narrator is very sexist?