By Tim McCanless

I got up the other morning and made coffee by pressing a few buttons, and went to my computer and much to my chagrin, there was no internet. I paid my bill; it was just an outage in my area. That still left me with a feeling of loss and helplessness. In this day and age, we have become so dependent on devices like personal digital assistants and Blackberries; even cell phones have become a vortex of communication beyond simply speaking to someone on the other end. Not only can you reach out and touch someone, you can see them and send them e-mail. If you get bored, pull up a game or tune into your favorite video clip. We have the world at our fingertips. But is that a good thing?

Where has the evolution of technology brought us so far? In my opinion, we have a new generation of overweight children with better hand-eye coordination than any generation before us.

I know a child who is 4 years old and his parents just got him his own kid's laptop so he wouldn't use theirs all the time. I was astounded. Here was this child, who can't speak in full sentences, yet he can surf the web and use websites like a pro. When I was 4 years old I was probably still in a diaper and playing with imaginary friends.

As many of us were growing up we saw the computer age slowly integrated into our lives. I didn't own a computer until I was an adult. Any further information might lead you to figure out my age!

In my research, I have found that children ages 6-15 would prefer to communicate through instant messaging, texting, MySpace and e-mail than to actually go out and meet their friends in a social setting. In essence, it means that many technologies meant to free us from mundane tasks (or replace us) can actually do the exact opposite, i.e. sometimes the technology can actually enslave us.

Instead, "high tech, high touch" means that people should find a balance between high-tech skills and high touch skills of life, the latter being activities that keep us healthy, creative, and energized.

Is society inadvertently teaching today's youth to refrain from the social graces that we were brought up with? I think so. It is the job of the parents and teachers to see that their children "go out to play" as we did as children. And as adults, we have become all too familiar with cruising on line to set up instant dates from a file created by another user. This easily allows us to create a cyber-shell around us leading to unhealthy habits especially a lack of human interaction.

After I had a fit that I couldn't check my e-mail or my bank account, I sat and thought about what the world might be like if we didn't have computers. What if cell phones just made calls and do people still use a fax? It all seems to me that we have become lazy and dependent on our plastic keyboards and our cell phones with keypads, touch screens and iPods. So get up and go outside! Send a letter, interact with people. You may find that there is more heart in personal interaction than through an e-mail that has been forwarded to you.