The physical world is losing a lot of itself to the presence of digital devices. Young people, in particular, seem to have forgotten (or haven’t learned) that there are others around them that they can see, hear, and talk to as the ultimate non-digital medium.

The number of people who are lost in there cell phones, tablets, and other handheld digital devices is growing. They walk along the sidewalks and ride the bus so engrossed in the virtual that they rarely look up at the wonder of the world around them. The worst of these avatars are lost not only in the visual digital but the sound of digital music. Noise-cancelling headphones that make the sounds of the city as invisible to them as the visual world the “jacked-in” often ignore.

Digital devices are a part of our world. That will never change. However, a person’s cell phone shouldn’t be so important that its user walks into a lamp post, or me! No, i don’t have a cell phone or a tablet, yet I consider myself a digital person. My PC is my link to the virtual, and so far, it is enough for me. It is at home where I spend my time engaged in the virtual. I woory that if I had a portable digital device that kept me online all the time, I would become so lost in the virtual that I would lose my connection to the physical.

I do not want to be a digital sheep with my head down as if I’m eating grass.