Save the brain tumor part, this is what critics of the modern novel said at its rise in the 18th century. It’s an old thought and it still is simply the effect of nostalgia.

EVERY generation thinks the rising generation is corrupted in some way. Sure sitting in a car and texting makes you miss the drive, and the trees, and the views, but who cares? Who’s to say staring at some trees is any more fulfilling then texting your wife and kids that you love them, or that you won your baseball game?

In terms of paying attention in class, while it is a distraction, if the kid wants to pay attention he will, if he doesn’t he wont, phone or not. Text messaging is in every way analogous to what one might expect from telepathy. A thought pops into my head and without bringing that thought to the attention of the people around me, I’m able to transmit it to someone across the globe, they receive it without bringing it into their environment, and then the message may disappear forever.

And telepathy is Kick@$$!!!!!!

Couldn’t one make all the arguments against cell phones just as well against the “comment” function of a blog? You’re practically inviting people to spend time hashing thought out on a keyboard instead of in conversation with others in person, in which case you’re enervating public space. I have heard some bitchy cell phone conversations in my day, and some insipid ones as well, but never anything as feverishly mean-spirited or as stupid as the multitude of comments I have seen on such (disreputable) websites as YouTube and even on such (reputable) others as FPR. And as for distracting attention, I have seen few things sap the energies of a middle-aged intellectual as much as the desire to get his opinion, yea or nay, heard on a blog he happens to follow.

If cell phones are the technological poison of the masses, I think an equally valid case can be made that blogs such as FPR are the technological poison of the socially contrary. (I offer no judgment on that first premise.)

Marianne: What about the War? Isn’t it a little too soon after for an agrarian spirit to be marrying a New Englander?

Why would English artisans instead have a permanent entitlement to their jobs? I don’t think I like the idea that one has a positive right to throw a tantrum and destroy someone else’s property when life doesn’t go your way.

For all our (English) time saving devices its the local Amish who enjoy their time. They certainly work hard, but they also get together and have great community games of softball and football. When the weather turns bad they enjoy table games, stories and such. They also love to visit friends and family, and throughout the year I see parties and weddings and auctions with hundreds of Amish getting together.
It’s my lawyer friends who are working the 6 -10 hours days…

But I still say – whatever the technology – its misues if not a function of the machine – it is a function of the person using it. People are responsible for what we do – with whatever we use. Blaming the admittedly obnoxious omnipresence of cell phones for the deterioration of civil life is foolish. We have allowed civil life, education, attention spans of teens, to be what they are. We tolerate boorish behavior or engage in it ourselves.

The fauly lies not in our cell phones – but in us.

I am nearly positive that the real defining feature of our generation is our scattered and undulating social circles. As a trend it has been developing for many generations, but at last it has become the set course. What a depressing thing! I attended college in New Hampshire, 2,000 miles from my home in Texas. My school friends hail from Michigan, Seattle, Florida, Virginia, Canada… The friends I grew up with in Texas have all fled from our (admittedly unlivable) hometown and spread out to Anywhere-but-my-hometownsville. I am going to marry a boy from Vermont and, God willing, set up a home near his family. But as for my family… It’s just darn sad.

Mr. Davidson: You assume that I wouldn’t give up “modern health care, abundant and diverse food supply, top-flight education, and access to media too.” But that’s where you’re wrong, sir! I would, I would! I would even trade being able to listen whenever I please to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir for the humbler experience of hearing songs about shucking corn accompanied by a troop of out of tune fiddles. I’d even trade my own beloved and quite excellent violin (and the training that enables me to coax lovely sounds from it) to play one of those out of tune fiddles. Even with the understanding that living in an age before anti-biotics means I’d be dead 10 times over. Ha! I win!

But all this is neither here nor there. Yes, these fantasies are all wrapped up in trivialities such as my personal distaste for florescent lighting. I would never expect more than a few other eccentrics to join in my non-existent cause for impossible Time migration. There isn’t much to be gained by promoting what is hypothetical.

And c’mon, of course I don’t believe we’re all better off dead than living in this crappy crappy age. I myself plan to have a bajillion kids (well, something like 6-12), and I believe with all my might that life is good. Simply and always good. I’m really not such a malcontent; I just firmly believe that death and labor must not be so feared.

Also, where are you getting your information about the original Luddites? I’ve always read that they were, on the whole, skilled artisan types, even if they had been forced to take their trade into factories.

On a more personal note, I totally feel you on the idea that the cell phone is a pretty poor replacement for physical proximity. I completely agree. But in the absence of physical proximity, it’s a nice thing to have. I live in Indiana. Most of my family lives in Pennsylvania. I am in regular contact with them. Absent telephony, I wouldn’t be. How is this a bad thing? I’m not arguing that it’s the same thing as being there, because it isn’t, but you can’t tell me with a straight face that this is worse than not talking to them at all.

And my job–in-house counsel–would be orders of magnitude more time consuming, expensive and difficult without the Internet. I would need access to well over twenty million pages of printed text (full editions of every statutory, regulatory, and judicial compilation for all fifty states and the federal government) to do what I do. A task which takes minutes now could have taken days even thirty years ago. Do I prefer books to the Internet? Absolutely. Would I go back to doing things on paper? Not on your life!

You’re also missing a key aspect of history of the Luddites. They were factory workers. Their objection was not to the introduction of factory methods as such, nor to the nature of the work to be done, but to the introduction of new methods, which made their ability to operate the old machines obsolete. There was nothing deeply human about what they were doing before hand, and the only principle they were standing on was that the new machines would put them out of a job. While I feel some sympathy with their plight, I can’t construe this as noble.

This sounds a lot like what you’re doing, i.e. arguing that the very technologies that enable you to live the relatively privileged life that you do should be unavailable to others. I’m sorry, I’m with you on the costs of technologies, but that’s where I get off the bus. It’s too transparently self-serving. Even saying that you’d trade it for a stable community doesn’t really cut it, because all you’re really doing is trying to foist off the costs after reaping most of the benefits. You, all of you really, are trying to have your cake and eat it too. I’m all for recognizing and mitigating costs–I don’t have an iPhone and don’t plan on getting one, but the cost I want to mitigate there is about $30 a month, not something more abstract–but I won’t try to cut off the limb I’m sitting on, nor will I let you get away with doing the same without calling you on it.

You want your stable, local, sustainable, intimate, relatively low-tech community, but I’d venture to guess that you also want your modern health care, abundant and diverse food supply, top-flight education, and access to media too. I mean, hell, why not throw in a magic pony while you’re at it? And I’m sorry, I just don’t believe you or Marianne when you say that you’d gladly give up modern conveniences for a simpler life, in no small part because most people who don’t have modern conveniences will either lie/cheat/steal/kill to get them, are already dead, or are too damn busy to even think about what they’re doing. The Amish may have a simple life, but they don’t have much time to sit around wondering whether they’re really living the good life. The cows need milked, the hay mown, the barn raised, the socks darned, and the eggs collected, and when the sun goes down, it’s basically time for bed. I personally like the fact that I don’t have to work ten to fourteen hours a day, six days a week, just to keep body and soul together, and I wouldn’t trade the benefits this confers on my soul for the benefits of a “simpler” life unless forced to do so.

The choice isn’t between the good things in your life with electronics or the good things in your life without electronics, it’s a choice between an examined life with manifest drawbacks or an unexamined life. That’s always been and will always be the choice.

I say quit pining for the impossible and thrive with the possible. Yeah, cell phones and other technologies make certain modes of the good life downright difficult. Okay, fine. They also make other modes of the good life a lot easier. Like the ability to exchange ideas with someone in parts unknown on a rainy Friday morning instead of reviewing the reinsurance contract on my desk.

Speaking of which…

I can’t construe that as a reasonable position, even from a Christian perspective. Electronics may endanger the soul in terms of a certain Chestertonian concept of the Good Life (one to which I am partial, make no mistake), but moving from there to suggest that they endanger the soul in an eternal sense is not a move I’m willing to make. You need to believe that only one particular spot on the spectrum of lifestyles throughout history is worth living and that all the rest are worse than death.

Say what you like about personal liberty, such a position is completely incompatable with it. And as your concept of the good life seems largely predicated on personal liberty, I can’t help but find the argument completely incoherent.