I know as I begin to write this piece that I run the risk of sounding like “the Uni-bomber,” but ol’ Ted may have had some valid points--yet by no means do I endorse his way of getting them across.  I’m as big a user of today’s modern technological miracles as the next person.  I’ve owned close to every electronic gadget on the market.  I wouldn’t be without my email, the Internet has brought long distance friends to the fore, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t touch a computer.  In fact, the computer has become a very close friend--and that’s precisely the problem:  we may be too close.

In this fantastic modern world of super-connectivity, are we losing something in the process?  Has an email replaced a phone call?  Is voice mail sometimes the only way you’re able to hear the sweet voice of a friend?  Do you spend more time chatting to a stranger in a  text room than conversing face to face with your neighbor? Has getting connected replaced getting contacted?

I don’t know about you, but I’m torn in a mind/body struggle of sensing a future filled with virtual friends and the deep longing for those wonderful simpler days when neighbors came over to borrow that cup of sugar.  Now, instead of “bothering a neighbor” we can just click and charge a 5-lb bag and have it delivered straight to our door with little or no human interaction. Oh, that’s right--today with downsizing, it’s four pounds!

Signe Dayhoff, in her book Diagonally-Parked in a Parallel Universe, recounts a two-year study conducted by Robert Kraut at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute that indicated much like television viewing, interactive computer usage tends to reduce social involvement.  Study participants reported a decline in interaction with family members and a reduction in their circle of friends as computer online usage increased.  Seems even one hour a week had the potential to lead to depression and loneliness.  Their hypothesis was that relationships maintained over long distances with no face-to-face contact ultimately did not provide the kind of support and reciprocity that typically contribute to a sense of psychological security and happiness.

Could this be exaggerating the problem?  Maybe, and it’s not my intention here to be against technology or progress, but this is just my little call to attention.  That we might all remember to veer off the information super-highway a bit, slow down and take the back road, linger on that front porch awhile with a few friends and neighbors while sipping that wonderful beverage sweetened from that borrowed cup of sugar!

The best things in life aren’t things.

Art Buchwald  

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