Put Down That Crackberry, You Plebes!

We've discussed before the social disconnect that many of us have with everyone else in our lives due to the constant, incessant demands of technology.

Here's a nice summation I came across today:

We are having distracted bits and pieces of conversation via text to people who aren't with us, which of course makes us have distracted bits and pieces of conversation with the people who are. We all go about our lives now with one foot in the invisible realm of our e-social lives. Admit it, if you're out with a friend and they get up to go to the bathroom, the first thing you do is reach instinctively for your PDA/phone, when you used to just sit idly and people-watch. Because even when it's quiet, it never stops whispering at you from your pocket or your purse: "cheeeeck meeeee. I could be that person who blew you off, finally coming to my senses. I could be that work email you've been waiting for. I could be that invitation to something better than where you are now." It whispers, it calls to us, it is both our social wellspring and the black hole devouring The Now.

I thought a brilliant film exploring this very disconnect was Ridley Scott's overlooked A Good Year, where during the course of the film Russell Crowe learns how to disengage, drop the Treo, and not coincidentally fall in love both with the gorgeous Provence countryside and a captivating local French waitress.

In Jeremy Rifkin's The Age of Access, the Wharton scholar warned us nearly a decade ago:

... while we have created every kind of labor- and time-saving device and activity to service one another's needs and desires in the commercial sphere, we are beginning to feel like we have less time available to us than any other humans in history.

... The network-based economy does indeed increase the speed of connections, shorten durations, improve efficiency, and make life more convenient by turning everything imaginable into a service. But when most relationships become commercial relationships and every individual's life is commodified twenty-four hours a day, what is left for relationships of a noncommercial nature -- relationships based on kinship, neighborliness, shared cultural interests, religious affiliation, ethnic identification, and fraternal and civic involvement?

Who the hail cares -- see you all on Twitter!