In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Dr. Heywood Floyd wishes his daughter a happy birthday from a space station orbiting the Earth via a “television-phone.” Walking down the street in downtown Santa Barbara are two people talking on their cell phones to two other people talking on their cell phones.  There are two conversations going on between two pairs of people and yet there is an almost complete and utter lack of interpersonal contact between the four people.  Each one is using a tool, the cell phone, to communicate to the others.  A couple goes on holiday in Monterey, California sitting at an elegant ocean side restaurant and talk about what is happening in their favorite television shows while ignoring the vast ocean before them and the cries of seagulls overheard.  We live in a word distracted by technology and we don’t appear to notice.  We move forward-looking to buy the latest in technological wonders presented for our enjoyment.  We buy computers based on such technological decisions as whether or not they will match the drapes.  People make cross-country drives and rather than look out at the countryside before them they watch DVDs on their portable DVD players.  Wherever one looks technology is overtaking the world we live in and distancing us from each other.  We think that technology brings the world closer but in the process of bringing that person from the other side of the globe into one’s virtual life, one’s real life is lost in the process and people embrace it.  We live in a world of Twitter and Facebook, of chat rooms populated by people using avatars that represent a caricature of self-identity and egotism.

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