Does Technology Enable Relationships?

Have you ever had a conversation with someone looked away for a second and when you look back they are texting someone? PLeeeeeze tell me it's not just me!

I so want to say, "it's not the technology, it's how we use it." Which is right, but it's also wrong. We are a society of short attention spans. Sometimes I think that technology just makes that attention span even shorter. So if you have a relationship with a short attention spanned techno warrior what do you really have? There's even commercials that play on this where two guys are at a table in a cafe and they are texting each other instead of talking. Is that real?

It's kind of like the whole Wii thing where people play tennis on the Wii and think they can really play tennis. Tennis is played with a little round yellow ball, not a wireless joystick. When these same Wii warriors go outside they are dismayed reality. So what? If they got exercise indoors why bother with the real thing? Maybe because the real thing is real? One of my kids cartoon movies, "Wall-E" shows a bunch of people living on a spaceship and they all live in a kind of virtual reality. They are ushered around on floating chairs and don't actually even look at each other unless it's on a screen. Kind of weird...but not far off reality.

So, back to short attention spans and texting.... I don't text. That costs extra. But if I did would I be looking at my phone every 5 minutes like everyone else? Would I sit in meetings with my head down and my thumbs pumping ferverishly? I hope not.

Does technology enable relationships? The mail helps keep people in contact who write letters to each other. The telephone helps keep people in contact who call each other. Maybe the internet could help me keep in contact with my wife and kids if they ever go to Budapest for a summer break? Who knows...crazier things have happened.