Disconnected

On Sunday afternoon I went to downtown Boulder with a mission to find the perfect wedding gift for one of my friends, who is getting married next week. While walking along Pearl Street, I was taking in the sights and mingling around booths that filled Pearl. It was the Boulder Asian Festival, so it was busy and there was a lot to see. At one point I stopped to sit on a bench to rest and to watch the people wander by. I happened to be near a restaurant that had a patio. At one table were four girls, all were otherwise engaged with their cell phones, BlackBerry, or iPhone. Two were talking on their phones, while the other two were frantically typing away with their text messaging. They didn't say one word to one another and hardly even looked up to make eye contact. Maybe the two on the phone were talking to each other, and maybe the other two were texting each other. Who knows?

I'll be the first to admit that the new cell phone technology is pretty awesome. The fact that you can browse the Web and send e-mails through your phone is pretty cool. Then there is there is that other, occasionally used feature, the ability to make an actual phone call. I'm a technology geek, so I like these things. But I all too frequently see people completely absorbed and taken over by these little machines. Even in the fanciest restaurants where people are dressed up for the fanciest dinners, you'll see more than a few people fiddling with their phones. You know that your life has been taken over when you can't go more than twenty minutes or an hour without checking your e-mail or reading your text messages. You know that your life has been taken over when you can't take more than a few minutes to engage with the person sitting across from you. Technology is cool, but the complete inability to interact with someone unless it is through a screen of some kind is kind of sad. So put your phones down people! Take a minute to actually look at the person sitting across from you. Look into their eyes, watch their expressions, listen to their voices. It might be an old fashioned way of talking to someone, but it's pretty rewarding.