Coffee cup (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

Whilst everyone else is looking for some Irish roots to drag out into the sunlight, I’d like to talk about something completely different. I was in Costa (a coffee-house) with my husband at lunchtime today and I noticed that everyone was doing something… Most, were doing it on laptops, smartphones and tablets.

There were still the Sunday Paper readers, myself and the husband included. I noticed that all the other readers had smartphones within arms reach and the occasional “bzz bzz” would stop them reading and look at the screen instead.

Are we now all so connected (yet distant) that we are incapable of doing something as simple as having a cup of coffee with a friend or lover without having some form of communication or web connected device within a hairs breadth?

“I am also aware of the irony of writing this on a Wi-Fi connected Netbook from my writing couch.”

As if to illustrate my point even further, the group next to us were talking about their favorite hotels on holiday. I was very discouraged to hear that one of their criteria was the strength and quality of the Wi-Fi. I could understand if they had talked about business hotels but holiday destinations? I can think of nothing worse.

Technology enables us to connect in many ways and has been a positive influence on our lives, making things easier and faster. Technology can make you far more productive. It can also suck the time out of your day like a depressurization at 37,000 feet

I am as guilty as the next person of spending far more time on social media networks and playing stupid games than actually writing ( I also read today that procrastination is good for you. Yay!). But my coffee shop outing really got me thinking about how we receive our news and information and just how much gets re-packaged a thousand times, getting further and further away from someone’s original thought.

Are we all so plugged into content that we’ve stopped creating our own? Do we now rely so heavily on the news feed that we’ve stopped being able to work things out for ourselves and think things through? Do we now just ask Google?

What do you think?

Related articles

• Well connected (economist.com)
• Hardwired (mallorybower.com)
• Free Wi-Fi Launched in Downtown San Jose (hispanicbusiness.com)
• 5 Socially Unacceptable Things You’re Going To Do With Google Glass (readwrite.com)