Our post-transistor society has developed a love-hate relationship with communications technology. We love the convenience and gratification of instant communications – voicemail, email, cell phones, pagers, push-to-talk, text messaging, instant messaging, video messaging, chat rooms, forums, podcasts, webinars, blogs, tweets, 520 channels of TV – [BIG INHALE!] – the list goes on and on.

However, we have come to depend on this technology so much that when it doesn’t work perfectly, we get annoyed, frustrated, and upset. Still we keep on using our favorite gadgets, buying more of them, upgrading them to get the latest and greatest new features, and committing more of our time, money, and life to them, believing that they’ll make our life easier, fuller, richer and overall better. But has that really happened?
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