When you are out at dinner everyone puts their smartphone on the table, and you either clump them, or stack them together.

First person to check their phone during the course of the meal has to pay.

I completely agree with your post, and in fact the running joke in my family is if you want to get ahold of me on the weekend, call my wife. When I am not working I don’t want to be near a phone.

I think that we are truly in a technological infancy. It is all so new and shiny to us, but I feel that the ship will eventually right itself and things that matter will go back to mattering. Like personal communication.

I am sure when my children are older they will have smartphones that will simply accentuate their lives (like a stereo does for us) and not take it over (like the stereo did for those growing up in the 70′s).

Nice meeting you by the way. I am also a writer and am working on my third book (yet to be published). This one I am just going to market myself and put up on the kindle. You can read a couple of things I have written at:
thegoodmenproject.com search Michael Doran

One especially good reason for a blog is that you can point a person to a place and say “here…this is what I really think” and others who know you might just corroborate your message.

Fast and instantaneous connectivity has made too easy to pick the phone or not leave the keyboard for “just another minute”; but the downside is indeed, the horses and dogs are fed later than they should be and your love firmly believes that you’re more interested in the electronic device than them.

E. M. Forster wrote, “The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death”; nowhere does he mention time on the computer.

It’s high time we – I – realize exactly what you wrote: “Over and out and back to the real world. There are some really great people who do not live on the net. A lot of them are related to me or live right down the street.”

Sandra, I’ll call you later…

I have always left my cell phone in my car. It’s a damn mobile phone to me which means i use it when i am mobile. The people who have my office number call me at my office, the people who call me at home are the people i want to speak with when i am home..read , not at work.

I think we have all gotten a bit too fixated on what is going on with the twitter stream or on facebook or the online groups. It has become a way of life to see what these little avatars are up to today. 24/7 – Do i really matter to them or them to me. On some level, a little bit but not at the expense of the people whom i am really working to support or who depend on me for meaningful interaction.

I hit sort of the same wall you have hit when it dawned on me that the dogs and the horses had been fed late for two weeks because i was tapping away on some blog or reading a twitter stream. Good God, i never let things go or be done late to watch soap operas. Why would i let an interactive soap opera that i am a minor bit player in, take up that much “living time”.

Over and out and back to the real world. There are some really great people who do not live on the net. A lot of them are related to me or live right down the street.