The Malaise of Our Time

“When I recently went out to dinner with my twenty-five-year-old daughter and her friends, most of the young women kept their iPhones on the table beside their plates, like miniature oxygen tanks carried everywhere by emphysema patients. Every minute or two one of them glanced down at her device to see what new messages had arrived and to send out other messages. One of the young women showed the others a digitized photograph of her dog. Another played music on her iPod. Occasionally, a factual question would come up as they talked. Conversation stopped, while somebody went on the internet and looked up the answer. This disembodied existence is their realty.”

– from The Accidental Universe, by Alan Lightman, page 142.