Almost nothing, relatively speaking, would be different if you never existed. All this technology does is make it seem like this isn't true. This is perception, not reality.

just go camping in B.C., surviving off the grid isn't exactly shocking. turning off all your devices while staying in your urban environment and trying to explain that to your friends would be more of an interesting scenario.

In the US, we call such people "doctors".

Most places here you also aren't connected. is that news?

Maybe he'll finally get a clue that socialism is dreadful for its victims, despite the best intentions of the government. Rural Chinese have NO health care. Not expensive health care, or health care delivered ad hoc in hospital emergency rooms like the poor in America. Just plain NONE. They make as much income in their entire lives as typical Americans make in a month. Socialism is decrepit, let us hope David experiences an epiphany and steers Obama back to reality. Western capitalism is the cause of prosperity everywhere and anti-capitalism is the cause of suffering everywhere. Particularly in poverty stricken rural China.

Yes, much of the U.S. is not connected. Get out more often.

David, huge HUNG is crowding out wee salon right now--says he's confined to hbo but i kinda think he might find ya, even in china.

Here in southern Vermont, less than three hours from Boston, there's no cable, mobile phone service or broadband. Even the phone lines are old and noisy. Your best best here is satellite, same as rural China.

1 - LOL @ Patrick. I hate that "Hung" ad too, especially at work this morning. Thanks, Salon, for giving my boss major pause when he 'popped by' my cube! I hope he watches!

2 - Problems DO resolve themselves; Napoleon was right about the correspondence. I wait 24 hours to respond to panicked work emails. By the time I respond, the problem is magically diminished.

3 - I'm getting rid of my cell phone and everyone thinks I am nuts, but I am sick of getting calls from various people who are bored in traffic. Besides that, every conversation begins with: "where are you?" - how about, "none of your beeswax??!"

Also, I agree with the LW who pointed out that being reachable AND important is an illusion. So true: the world will continue turning on without us.

trend2121: You don't actually know that. It's impossible, really, to determine the greater importance any one individual has or will have in the greater scheme of things.

As for the article - yes, there has been a major shift in expectations in regards to communication, but I don't think it's necessarily unhealthy -though like anything it can be if not practiced in moderation. I am in my early twenties. A child of the computer era.

Yes, I have a facebook. No, I don't check it every day, or even every week.

Yes, I can text message like a pro, but I hardly let messages to my friends get in the way of people standing in front of me. That would be rude. Text messaging while driving is something else I don't do, on account of it being dangerous. If needs be, an average message can hang for days unanswered. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to reply to it.

I do read livejournal obsessively. But I also read books obsessively, a private activity that connects me mostly to the depths of my own mind. I give both equal time.

I choose not to have internet on my phone because I can live without it. I find I am happier for it - with it, a thing like going home to see if there is an email from my Brazilian pen-pal would lose it's anticipatory joy.

I am connected, but not, I think, hopelessly hooked.

In my life here in rural USA, I'm considered totally plugged in because I have... gasp! ...high speed internet AND a cell phone. I have no blackberry, no Twitter account, and I'm notoriously bad at turning on my cell phone. But among my friends, I'm considered the CONNECTED one. Some of them, I can't even get to respond to an e-mail. Here's the truth: you're in a small subset of people who are hyper-connected and meanwhile, out here in the real world, our potatoes are growing just fine without your blackberry.

You don't actually know that. It's impossible, really, to determine the greater importance any one individual has or will have in the greater scheme of things.

I wasn't speaking about all people. I used the pronoun "you" because I was talking about the people who would read what I was writing. No one reading what I wrote is so important that they need to be in instantaneous contact with anyone else.

Even the most important person in the world, the president of the US, has someone covering for him. If someone has made themselves so indispensible as to require more than, say, daily contact, that's a symptom of poor planning and/or bloated ego, not importance.

It might have been worth just leaving unannounced, and then commenting on the experience afterward.

Note how many readers have quickly pointed out that you could test the same deprivations in rural America or somewhere close without extending your carbon footprint.

Get a pencil, a notebook, a bicycle, a lunch-pack, and just go.

No iPod either.

It may sound a little harsh, but as Trend2121 observes, things go on much the same in our absence.

So now you are back and reading us, tell us how it went.

But the value of technology is in how it keeps people connected, n

ot disconnected from the real world. A few years ago, I moved back east. I had a local cell provider in my old state, so was without a mobile for a month or so. During this month, I traveled half an hour to meet a friend at his house, only to have him not answer the door when I got there. I missed my mobile then. Technology does more harm than good. It's just that manners have declined. Even the New York Times had an article in the past week about declining cell phone etiquette in the workplace. But don't blame technology where manners are at fault -- being a Luddite achieves nothing.