Paging Led Zeppelin

As someone who uses his cell phone discriminately, I rather enjoyed this article's viewpoint.

Link to August 21 Alternet.org post, "Communication Breakdown: How Cell Phones Hurt Communities".

Excerpt:

Billions of people across the world use cell phones. In some European countries, the number of cell phones in use is higher than the total number of people living there. Though cell phones can be wonderful, liberating tools of communication, freeing us from the confines of an office, and providing more leisure time, they often do the exact opposite. Cell phone use has blurred the boundaries between work and non-work time, increasing stress and tension within families and between friends. As Noelle Chesley, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, explained in a report on CBS News, "The question of 'blurred boundaries' may become an irrelevant one for the next generation of workers, spouses, and parents because they cannot imagine life any other way." As Slate commented in his Adbusters essay, "It seems the more 'connected' we are, the more detached we become."