Raising iBrows

How connected do you want to be? Need to be?

Im not talking about knowing the movers and shakers who will get you a cooler job or better seats. Im talking about being addicted to connecting.

We all know people with the affliction. Perhaps youre one of them.

Im not. At least, not yet. But I worry that its only a matter of time.

At business functions, some of my tablemates constantly take out their smartphones to check email. Or to tweet that theyre eating lunch in a hotel ballroom. Or maybe to order a pizza. Gazing around the room at these events, I see plenty of furtive connecting going on. I like to think I have better manners than that. But I accept that it may simply be that I havent gotten around to adding a robust data plan to my cellphone agreement. Without this ability to stay connected at all times in all places, one must listen to the luncheon speaker (without tweeting about it), one must converse with ones tablemates (instead of texting the kids) and one must wonder if the squiggly dessert is cake, pie or some obscure element from the noble gases.

I will join the smartphone crowd eventually, for I am not a Luddite. I blog. I tweet. I link. I face. But I dont have to be so connected that it defines me. I dont care to know if a friend has (or hasnt) sent me an email in the past 30 seconds. Im OK with keeping my Twitter followers waiting while I digest the surf n turf.

Same goes for my relationship with the iPad and tablets of its ilk. Friends who have them love them, and Im impressed with the whizbang technology that makes these devices must-haves for early adopters and lovers of shiny things. Whats not to like about a machine that handles your messages, makes dinner reservations, schedules your appointments, pinpoints your location in the solar system, keeps your family photos neatly filed and starts your car? Still, I dont mind being the only one in the conference room who doesnt have one, even at the expense of being the geek-tech equivalent of the guy wearing brown shoes to a black-tie event.

If Im told today that to do my job better I need an iPhone or an iPad or some new iGlassesbecause you know thats where all this connectivity stuff is headedIll sign up immediately. But as long as these things remain optional items on the menu of life, Ill continue to see no urgent need to send a photo of the mysterious dessert to my Facebook friends or to discover how cool Angry Birds looks on an iPad screen.

Nearly two decades ago, the esteemed cultural critic Neil Postman, in his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, wrote: Technology, in sum, is both friend and enemy. Postmans point was that eager adopters should never assume that technological advances contribute exclusively to the betterment of society.

There are certainly downsides to our obsession with connectedness. The hilarious monologist Mike Daisey points them out repeatedly in his latest one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which played the Seattle Repertory Theatre recently. Daisey himself is obsessed with gadgetshe goes to bed with his iPhone close at handbut he also sees the disadvantages, not the least of which is our insidious infatuation with the acquisition of stuff.

In his monologue, Daisey waxes serious about labor conditions in China, where all of our shiny gadgets are made by hundreds of thousands of people, not machines. Hes realistic enough to know were not going to quit our habits anytime soon just because a 14-year-old is working 15-hour days to produce a 16-gigabyte tablet. [But] when Apple releases its next amazing device, he says, you can ask yourself if you really need to upgrade immediately.

When I hear your answer, Ill tweet about it. Eventually.