I was moseying down the aisle at the grocery store the other day when an old friend greeted me with a hearty "Hello! How ya' doing?" The voice came from behind me and I couldn't recognize who it belong to, so I put on my best pleased-to-see-you-too face and spun around.

I had worked up a vivacious "Howdy!" before realizing that the speaker was entirely unknown to me. What's more, he wasn't quite looking in my direction—he was looking at the off-brand frosted flakes along the bottom shelf. And there was something peculiar about the way he cocked his head, the way he hunched his left shoulder. Then I noticed the slab of silver pressed up against his ear.

I wrestled my greeting into a muffled croak just in time to hear him say, "Well yeah, long time no see!" A swirl of tin-foil chatter erupted from the box at his ear. I turned away and resumed my perusal of the porridge section. Then I realized I was still smiling, and stopped.

Call me old-fashioned, call me pre-post-modern, but I can't stand the cell phone. Oh, I've got one and I use it. But it knows its place and it stays put most of the time. I keep it on a short leash. It speaks only when spoken to.

I'm no Luddite. I make software for a living, for crying out loud. I was browsing the web back when NCSA Mosaic was the only way to do it. But I've worked with technology long enough to know it can help or it can hurt. Cell phones help a lot. But they hurt a lot—you and me. The trouble is: it's not always obvious when they're helping and when they're hurting.

Did you know that talking on a cell phone while you're driving is not much better than driving drunk? Who'd'a guessed? The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society estimates that 2,600 deaths a year happen in the US because somebody was yakking and driving. Driving with a cell is illegal in Britain, Japan, Spain, Australia, France, Germany, and about 45 other countries—not to mention California, New York, and a few other places. Sometimes it's obvious when cell phones hurt, even if we don't want to believe it.

But sometimes it's not so obvious. Sometimes the way they hurt is so small and so subtle that in our enthusiasm for gadgets and chatter we overlook the downsides. And when millions of people around the globe spend so much time talking at pieces of metal—a 2007 Disney survey showed that kids spent an average of three hours and 45 minutes per day on their cells—little hurts can open up a big wound.

Here's an example. Have you noticed that in the last ten years cell phones have changed what the word "with" means?

It used to be that if I was in a car with some friends, I was with those friends. If I wanted to talk, I talked to them. There was no other option. Nowadays I get halfway through my best joke before realizing that what my passenger is laughing at is a text he just received from a buddy in Las Vegas. He's not with me. He's in my car, but he's with his buddy.

It used to be that if I was waiting at the doctor's office I was with my fellow patients. I didn't want to be. I wanted to be away from their coughing and blowing. But I was with them. And if they wanted to ask how old my boy was, I told them and asked how old theirs was. If somebody looked like they were going to faint we fetched the nurse. In our small way we were bound together, tethered with the cords of shared misery. Nowadays that lady who might have asked about my goiter instead gossips with her girlfriend. It's my disease that she'll be catching even though she's not quite here.

With used to mean the people you could punch if you had to. And that's a sensible definition, it seems to me. Nowadays with means the people whose gadgets you can make buzz. Your Xbox Live buddies, your Facebook friends, your contact list. You may never have met these people. You can't smell them, you can't kiss them, and their voices sound like a soup can. But by Jove you're connected.

Cell phones help and they hurt. They help when they connect people who can't otherwise connect. They hurt when they get in the way of real-world connections. And they get in the way more often than we realize. We just don't notice because—well, because we're chatting.

There used to be a song people listened to, back when people listened to the same songs as other people.

If you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with

Sometimes the hippies took these words a little too seriously. But today the song gives a helpful reminder that the people around us—I mean actually around us—matter in ways that nobody on the other end of a line or radio wave can matter. Real people need smiles and thank yous and having doors held open for them and handshakes and hugs far more than wireless people need them. The way we're with real people is important in ways that no other definition of with can match.

I say we take back with and make it mean something again—something physical and immediate and germ-laden and real. And I'm ready to do my part.

So here's my commitment to you, dear Reader. If I'm ever in your presence, and there's a competition between me being on my cell phone and me interacting with you, you win. Proximity trumps virtuality. So if I'm talking to you and my phone rings, let it ring. If I'm talking on the phone and you walk up, I say a quick goodbye and hang up. If I'm texting and you're talking, hit me in the ear and I'll stop.

If I can't be with the one I love, I'll love you. Not in a hippy way I hasten to add.

Labels: technology