SELECTION 2 C For Conversation, Press # 1 by Michael Alvear A funny thing happened in the way to communications revolution: we stopped talking to one another. I was walking in the park with a friend recently, and his cell phone rang, interrupting our conversation. There we were, walking and talking on a beautiful sunny day and-poof! ---I became invisible, absent from the conversation because of a gadget designed to make communication easier. The park was filled with people talking on their cell phones. They were passing other people without looking at them, saying hello, noticing their babies or stopping to pet their puppies. Evidently, the untethered electronic voice is preferable to human contact. The telephone used to connect you to the absent. Now it makes people sitting next to you feel absent. Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel? Every advance in communications technology is a setback to the intimacy of human interaction. With e-mail and instant messaging over the Internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. In making deposit at the bank, you can just insert your card into the ATM. With voice mail, you can conduct entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine. As almost every conceivable contact between human beings gets auto- mated, the alienation index goes up. I am no Luddite. I own a cell phone, an ATM card, a voice-mail system, and an e-mail account. Giving them up isn't an option---they're great for what they're intended to do. It's their unintended consequences that make me cringe. So I've put myself on technology restriction: no instant messaging with people who live near me, no cell-phoning in the presence of friends, no letting the voice mail pick up when I'm home. Readers Digest, pp. 143-145, July 2000 Questions: 1. What is your understanding on this passage: "Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel?" 2. Why do you think the author came up with this kind of article? 3. Upon reading the article, do you agree with the author's opinion? Why or why not?