“When we buy into cell phones, we may be really buying into a cultural story that is much bigger than your average clam-shell. We may be buying into a story that tells us that all hours of the day are identical, that there’s no right or good way to order time — 8 hours a day for work-related calls, for example, but peace and quiet and time for friends and family after 5 pm. We may be buying into a story that is essentially Gnostic, that tells us that our minds, our attention and our conversations should be focused on a person in another city, instead of on the person right next to us. We may be buying into a story that tells us never to be tranquil or still. We may be buying into a story that praises “connectivity” but yanks us out of the small corner of the world we happen to inhabit today.”

You’re welcome. And I know exactly what you’ve encountered. The solution? You and I have to be the ones who reach out. We simply can no longer expect others to do it. It has to be us. For us extroverts, that’s not hard. For introverts, it’s going to take work—no way around it.

I think that cellphones hurt more than they help. They only keep us from what would have been face-to-face interactions previous to cellphones coming on the scene.