There?s a new book by journalist Michael Harris titled The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We?ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection in which he says that modern technology, especially the smartphone, has robbed us of certain essentials in our lives, mainly time for solitude and time for thinking, thanks to constant interruptions and distractions. He believes that certain generations alive today will be the last to remember what life was like before the Internet and social media came along and caused such massive disruption. Only this generation can ponder over what we?ve lost, if their smartphone will allow them time to do so. He argues, forcefully, that it is a good time for society to stop and think about protecting some aspects of our pre-Internet lives, and move towards a balanced future that embraces technology while holding on to absence. Harris points out that we are losing something that?s not obvious, absence. Absence includes solitude, daydreaming, reverie. As he says, ?these things are very hard to quantify?.

He gives the example of someone going abroad for a month and their family demanding constant text messages or Facebook posts to keep in touch. That, he says, is what relationships have come down to, that social media has become a substitute for actual physical togetherness. The point he makes is that we no longer experience the absence of our loved ones the same way we used to. The author describes our obsession with digital life and asks us to reflect on what we are giving up every time we turn to our phones or the computer. The greater problem comes when tech interruptions become our experience: that is, not a means to an end, but the end itself?of our work, learning, or discovery. He describes a visit to the Louvre in Paris to look at the Mona Lisa, and was amazed to find most people standing in front of the most famous artwork in the world were looking at their phones more than the actual painting. Harris, a Canadian journalist and author, uses research to show the negative effect that personal technology is having on our cognitive function, interpersonal relationships and encounters with the world. The author is concerned about the younger generation who will never know a world without the Internet. His thesis is based on the fact that we are increasingly divorced from the ?authentic? when we replace real-life objects and communications with mere copies: Kindles for books or text messages for in-person conversations.

In an attempt to test the value of ?absence?, the author gives himself two weeks to read War and Peace: ?My phone goes off… I want to read, but I stop. I know the distractions are unproductive and I fly to them all the same.? He eventually disconnects long enough to complete the 1,225-page novel, during which he abstains from technology in the hopes that he might fully recover his lost ?absence?. By the end of the trial, nothing magical has happened?he is still ?utterly wired to the promise of connection?. The book is a timely reminder of our headlong plunge into the digital domain and what it is doing to us. ?We owe it, I think, to future generations to think about this,? he says. It?s a thought expressed somewhat differently in another book, Alone Together, by Sherry Tuckle, an MIT professor. She found in her research that the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather than internally developed: a profile to be sculptured and refined in response to public opinion. ?On Twitter or Facebook you are trying to express something real about who you are,? she writes, ?but because you?re also creating something for others? consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you?re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance.? Effectively, it blurs the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self. The risk of the performance culture we find ourselves in today, of the packaged self, is that it distorts the very relationships it purports to create.

A global study on social media published recently discovered that 88% believed that people are less polite on social media than in person. Effective communication in person and while online are generally vastly different. Twitter, of course, restricts wordage, so attempts at shorthand may turn out clumsy and even convey the wrong message. Ultimately, what social media does is to encourage self-expression but at the cost of self-awareness. Increasingly, we are becoming a society that lives vicariously through our smartphones. Shakespeare?s statement that all the world?s a stage may have been written for our times rather than his. In a recent article in The Huffington Post, Nancy Collier writes that ?with technology leading the way, we are creating an adult infancy, a state of being where no self-experience exists unless reflected back through our digital lens, our new mother. What will be the result of all of this unceasing reflection? Perhaps we will disappear into our devices altogether, finally existing only in digital form, birthing ourselves through a new app.? Scary thought that.

The writer is Group Editor, Special Projects & Features, The Indian Express