Yesterday as I was sitting at the gate waiting for my flight, I realized that we have lost the ability to sit and do nothing. Or to sit and make small talk with a complete stranger. Everywhere I looked people were on iPhones or laptops or iPads. Now, before you call me a hypocrite I wrote this in a journal with a pencil (Ok. A mechanical pencil) and I am now sending it out into cyberspace (NOW you can call me a hypocrite).
I was sitting across from a youngish couple. The guy was on his iPad, his wife was texting on her phone while also on the laptop. They may have said 20 words to one another the entire wait. Further down the row was a family. Mom and Dad on their respective iPhones and the boy, around three I'd guess, on his game device. No talking, no touching, no communication at all with the people they were actually with. Weird.
Remember that Star Trek: TNG episode where the two giant robots were battling and in the process destroying a planet? Captain Picard and the Enterprise crew finally figured out that it was two kids, who had no idea of the existance of the other, in different areas playing a game. They had been so isolated that the only way they knew how to connect with the world was through a game device.
As great as all this technology is sometimes I think it is pulling us further apart, even as it brings us closer together.
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