The Web: Making the Distant Close . . . And The Close Distant?

I have taken to spending Sunday mornings at the local Panera's, reading the paper and drinking coffee while Judy goes to church (something I do little of, although the obligatory Easter Sunday is looming on the horizon). There is a family of three who is there every Sunday just like clockwork, sitting in the same place: a husband and wife in their mid-30s, I would guess, and a little girl of about 5 or 6. They are always still there when I leave to join Judy for brunch, so I am not sure how long they actually spend there, but we're there together for over an hour at least. And, so far as I can tell, they never say more that three words to each other. The father and mother are immersed in their separate laptops (he with an Apple and she with a Sony Viao) while the little girl reads a book. I have this urge to go up to the little girl and say, "Hey sweets! You need to get yourself a laptop. Then you could talk to you mom and dad. Wouldn't THAT be cool?!"

There is an iconic quality to this little weekly tableau, for even from my own experience the effect of a wireless high speed internet connection is to create a paradox: at the same time it enables us (even compels us) to become ever more involved in the lives and doings of those far away, it seems, in the process, to distance us from the lives and doings of those close by. It creates a great leveling of relationships. It is as if we each have a certain, finitie quantum of energy we can devote to relationships. For some the size of that quantum is doubtless larger than it is for others. Compare Bill Clinton to almost anyone, for instance. But for all of us, the more we divide our realtionship quanta among more and more people and events, the less and less of it we can devote to any individual relationship or event.

My intution (perhaps instinct) is that this dissipation of our relationship energy is not a good thing. But, I reserve judgment, well aware that seeing change as a bad thing is the surest sign of old age. Still, I find it hard to understand what could lead a youngish couple to spend a couple hours on a Sunday morning in a restaurant with each other and their 5 yeaar-old daughter and be far more interested in what was going on on the web than what was going on at their own table.