Ever Decreasing Circles

Tell me if I’m just a killjoy, a Luddite, a grumpy old cynic but have we not reached the point at which there are so many means of communicating with one another that we spend all our time doing just that and there is nothing left to recount, except that we have been busy tellling people that we have been busy telling people….well things, eg, how much we have been blogging, tweeting, twittering, e-mailing, instant messaging, Skype-ing, phoning, texting, YouTubing, Facebooking with friends, cyber “friends” (of which we would never admit to having fewer than a three-figure number)…..

And if we are not communicating via this bewildering proliferation of channels, we are glued to our computers (table-top, laptop, handheld), surfing, googling, gaming, downloading – this last, so that we may listen on MP3 players, iPods etc – which are so much of the time feeding our ears to the exclusion of…..actual conversation with real people, like, maybe, the rest of the family.

No, but stop me; I am indeed a Luddite. After all, doesn’t the above look like a re-run of what people said about what television would do to us? Well yes, but didn’t they have a point?