Read and translate the text. Is Technology Making Us Ultimate Strangers?

Is Technology Making Us Ultimate Strangers?

Cell phones and beepers keep us in touch, but they also keep us from the best of ourselves and others.

By J.Coleman

Every day when I walk out of my house I feel surrounded. Surrounded by mere civilians so loaded down with the latest equipment that any military commander would be envious. Cell phones, beepers, headsets, watches that both tell time and give good e-mail-devices that allow you to keep up and keep track… America is on the move, utterly self-absorbed, multi-tasking, busy, busy, busy…

Frankly, I worry about the freedom we give up, the time to think and reflect, the time to consider where we've been in order to see where we are — or want to be — going.

Now some confessions are in order. I've had an e-mail only for a little more than a year, and I worry that I'm starting to become obsessed by it. If someone hasn't left us a phone message or a fax, there is always a chance that an e-mail awaits.

Do you remember when you and your friends would go to the beach to swim? These days, I go to the beach and see teenagers come out of the water and instantly get on their cell phones. They can't imagine a life without a cell phone.

Nonetheless, I still say: why not step back and view all this progress from a different angle? Instead of trying to figure out ways to do a hundred things at once, why not slow down? After all, the greatest gift you can offer another person is your ability to listen, to act that person feel that you are intent on what he or she is saying, that you have all the time in the world. I have come to learn how much people yearn to be understood, how much they want and need to be able to explain themselves.

Technology, for the most part, creates the illusion of intimacy. As marvelous as it can be, it also keeps us from the best of ourselves and enables us to avoid others. It makes us into intimate strangers.

To me, the most splendid things about a place like New York City, is that you can walk the streets day after day, year after year and always see something new, something that will astonish or touch you. But if you are not open to these things, if you're too busy walking down the street glued to your phone and cut off from all that is around you, you're going to miss something. It may seem intangible and, therefore, unimportant, but those something have a way of adding up.