I have begun wondering aloud about whether the social media era is our closest approach as a species to telepathy. And while hardly a (modern) sci-fi maven, I

I have begun wondering aloud about whether the social media era is our closest approach as a species to telepathy. And while hardly a (modern) sci-fi maven, I never encountered any works that tried to step through how a species would achieve telepathy. The stories I read that had telepathic species glossed over their transformation, usually with some variant on the phrase, "It wasn't pretty."