More on Too Much Connection

More thoughts on last week's USA TODAY story about the dire consequences of our mobile society. Once upon a time, there was great fear that many might not survive the incredible speeds of trains. That the telephone was an unwanted invasion of privacy. It violated the codes of polite society of sending a card to inquire about visiting in person. Instead, you put yourself in someone else's home.

The authors touted in the article, of course, are current. No one ever remembers Stephen Kern's The Culture of Time and Space. If you want the work on the moment when modernity crushed the separation we once had, Kern came out with a 20th anniversary edition in 2003. He is the original in the area. What we get today are folk riffing on him into the mobility and never off part. I had some emails with Kern once about did he think today was unique or repeating what he found.

A concession I will grant, and admit to some concern about, is the 24/7 accessibility provided by mobile lifestyle. Claude Fischer of Cal puts it best:"the idea that you are available to everybody in your social circle at every minute and they are available to you."

The lack of downtime to think, meditate or recharge is a part of this go-go mindset where as one author touted cell phones convert wasted time walking places into contact with others. Sometimes, we need to be alone to let the thoughts of the day rattle around and get sorted out in our head.

Bad enough that I was reading the article in the bathroom to "kill time" and that I admit to using the iPad similarly. I've made some conscious decisions to not us the iPod in the shower - because the distraction of the podcast or music is going to interrupt that mental flow. It has always been - and continues to be - where the best ideas come, and precisely because there ISN'T any other outlet than listening to myself.

It is generational. The various authors point out how they don't like the expectation of always on connectivity, but the 12-year-old children think it is great.

The amusing note: Bushnell Boyer's "discovery" of the old Robin Williams joke that you can't tell the difference any more frothe crazy people and the ones on the cell phones.  "It use to be if someone was talking to themselves, they were usually not in their right state of mind," Boyer said.

But I do respect where Boyer takes his thought: "They're not connected to the time or place they're in."

Which brings us back to Kern's Time and Space.

But this same tool allows me to be able to get an alert via text on my mobile in New Orleans about a tornado warning in Fayetteville, Ark., turn on my iPad to evaluate the radar data and even though I'm really not in a position to assist the local weather net from here, I can fulfill one part of why I've volunteered with that service for the past decade - I can text my family members and let them know they are OK and the storms are on the other side of the county at this time.

Similarly, after days of being "on" here at our bowl game, I tried to take three outs off the grid - and the texts and calls followed me right into the event. And for about half of the time, I wasn't there, I was mentally away dealing with a pair of crisis.

Community and connectivity are one in the same. "Social graphs" are just a fancy demographer lingo for "your circle of extended friends" - and they are so important because we are at our roots not just social beasts, but tribal ones.