Switch off your mobile!

Unplug your iPod!

And stop checking those emails!

We are almost always within reach of something to fill our brains. Mobile phones, iPods, portable DVD players, television, email, games consoles, Facebook, personal data assistants… the list goes on and on.

The result is that people are so dazed they have almost no time to reflect on the world around them, much less the future.

In this bright new over the edge technological world, something is surely missing and that something is focus and quiet moments.

We are able to tap into 50 million websites, 1.8 million books in print, 75 million blogs and other snowstorms of information, but we increasingly seek new knowledge in Google searches at the same time as juggling other tasks.

Through technology we can contact millions of people across the globe at the touch of a button. We connect more and more with even our closest friends and family via instant messaging, and the quick meetings we do have are interrupted by pings and beeps and multi-tasking.

Day by day our hectic lives eat away our capacity for deep focus and awareness, so much that one might wonder whether future generations will ever experience undisturbed thought and conversation…

Part of article by Maggie Jackson, June 2008