Net Native: At loose ends in a connected world

There are only two places 23-year-old Tasha Frost will not take her Dash cell phone and hot pink Bluetooth earpiece: her bed and the shower.

"It never stops," Frost said as she waited in line to see Ne-Yo at The Showbox on Sunday, the flash of pink drawing double takes to her right ear. It's a constant companion, she said. What's more, she never lets a call go to voice mail, no matter what she's doing. Frost is one with her phone.

You might think a person who wears her phone as often as she wears her shoes would love, love, love it. I said as much.

"I don't have a phone," Frost said, shaking her head. "I have a problem."

In that case, maybe we all do.

Nothing tramples the barriers of space and time like communications technology. But despite all that our cell phones and iPods and PDAs have done in the name of connectivity and convenience, there's a sense in which they've failed us.

They were supposed to give us more control and more freedom in an increasingly hectic, demanding world. Yet 45 percent of Americans say technology has weakened their handle on life or made no difference whatsoever, according to a 2006 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project. Fully 42 percent of Americans say they're annoyed by tech-borne intrusions on the go. And a quarter of cell-phone users -- who made up 73 percent of the U.S. population in 2006 -- say they don't like being so darned available.

Even convenience comes at a cost, and not everyone wants to pay. But more than 2 billion cell-phone users worldwide do, with millions more joining every year.

It makes me think of "The Matrix," because every pessimistic thought about technology makes me think of "The Matrix." There's a reason a world ruled by a race of machines feasting on humans caught in a virtual techno-trance resonates with us: We already know what it's like to be slaves to technology. For some, it means feeling naked without their e-mail. For me, it means checking Facebook 10 times a day. For Frost, it means always wearing pink.

We also know how easily our toys can make us lose touch with reality. At least we do a great job at denying our complicity.

Kipp Beck, 18, listens to her iPod on her walk home and on the bus. But she isn't disconnected, she said -- no, no -- because if someone did want to talk to her, which is unlikely, she'd take out her ear buds and listen. "I don't see it as a way to get me out of the real world," she said. "I'm not trying to get out of my life."

Maybe that's because her "real world" isn't everybody else's -- yet.

Maybe the "real world" is changing.

Like many who have integrated technology into their daily lives, Beck draws a distinction between the physical world of traffic, overcast skies, screeching tires and distant conversations (the only world we thought we needed) and the world of personal communication, which can be either physical or virtual and where the likelihood of social interaction determines our level of investment.

The latter is only possible through technology. But does that mean the former is still more "real"?

Forty-one percent of cell-phone users say they do much of their chatting while they commute or while they wait to meet with someone. That means about 90 million Americans would rather be disconnected from the physical world, but connected to a more active virtual one, than just be.

A displaced reality is becoming the new reality. In 20 years, we might define the real by our connections, not our locations. In 50, we might be explaining the meaning of the phrase "stop and smell the flowers" to our bored grandkids.

Is that a bad thing?

It sure sounds like it, even to yours truly, who rarely walks alone anywhere with both ears naked and would defend the integrity of online social networking from the highest hill.

But you can bet a child born into such a world won't find a thing wrong with it. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the Digital Age, is technological progress.

Is it also human progress?

We'll have to ask the robots.