Boing points to an interesting - if incorrect - essay about the effects of mass communication technology which attempts to dispell concerns about...stuff. iPoddy stuff apparently is charged with destroying the youth of the nation and the essayist wants to make clear that ain't so:

More recently, in the 1950s, people lamented that the transistor radio would spell the end of families gathered around the radio; it did, but it didn't stop families from listening to music and talking together. Parents were no longer able to prevent their children from secretly listening to rock 'n' roll, or doo-wop, or even jazz, but that hasn't pulled families apart, either. Some technologies even move from one extreme to the other. Parents who used to worry that the personal computer would isolate their kids now fret about them spending too much time instant messaging.

All I can think of when I read stuff like this - and, yes, it is stuff - is...has this guy never walked in a suburb? The idea that tech toys have not altered community for the worse is nuts. Street after street of blue glow houses where neighbours do not know each other's names. Little Johnny upstairs accessing porn on the internet at age 12 as easily as checking out sports stats. "Community building" being understood as somehow mainly possible from the keyboards at the ends of wires.

It really is sad. One day this will pass and there will be a new fad to not be on line, connected, available. "24/7" will be just a kind of pathetic concept. Maybe it will start when people ask - what did that say to each other that needed all that connection?