Are we too wired?

I have said many times in my posts that I believe everything in life is balanced, for every good there is an evil and for every up there is a down. Lately, that belief has set its sites on this now wired world of ours and the downside of the connections and distractions those wires provide. Sure, inventions like the alphabet, writing, the printing press, typewrites, computers and the internet all provided easier means of sharing information, leading to great discoveries and the propagation of ideas on a wide scale. But like I said everything has a down side. The same technologies that allow us to share good things, also allow us to share hate literature, weapon designs, stolen credit card numbers and entire identities.

My real annoyance with portable electronic devices began one evening when my wife and I were out at dinner. Eating our bread sticks dipped in alfredo sauce we were absolutely disgusted at the family sitting next to us. Here they were, all five of them, two parents and three kids, eating “together” with only the parents speaking. All three kids alternated between picking at their food and either text messaging their friends or playing their GameBoys. Bad parenting? You bet, but this type of activity is becoming more commonplace it seems; and unfortunately now that I have noticed it, I see it everywhere (like the arrow in the FedEx logo).

“But they were only kids”, you say? Perhaps, but the behavior is not unique to kids. The boyfriend of one of my wives friends would regularly attend holiday dinners with our families and spend half of his time on his BlackBerry working, sometimes at the table. Manners aside, if you cannot enjoy a dinner with friends and family without constantly checking your phone, you have problems. Sure he was a bit of a workaholic, (even working during a wedding in the balcony once) but with the introduction of cell phones, BlackBerry’s, PDA’s, text messaging, SecurIDs and remote email access, people are spending more and more time connected to work, friends and family, after all they are only a few keystrokes away now.

Yes, I know, those connections can be a great thing in certain situations, but people have a hard time knowing when they should sever those connections and the devices off or simply ignoring them. There have been far too many times when I have seen people out in public rush to pick up their phone only to talk about nothing. Phone calls on elevators or standing in a check out line with conversations like “Oh, nothing, just picking up some groceries. What are you doing?” Never mind some of the more obscene calls I have heard; though as an aside my personal theory is that people have some weird expectation of privacy when a phone is connected to their ear, no matter where they are physically located.

The big problem with these connections is that they remove you own personal time when you could sort things out in your mind, or simply think about nothing and day dream about the future. It seems, for many, those days are long gone; their need to talk to everyone all the time has made them slaves to the devices attached to their hips. So, I urge you, take one hour a day (bed time doesn’t count), and get away from your computers, ignore your cell phones, and put down the iPod. Go for a walk or just lie in bed and think. Get away from everyone and everything and enjoy yourself (not like that you pervs! Though, I guess you could *rawr*). Stop being slaves to the devices and the people connected to them and reclaim your independence from them. Or if you really need to talk to someone, go meet them face to face, they won’t bite, I promise.