Modern Communication...What is it?

I keep thinking about our modern world.  What is it about smart phones and the Internet that seemingly makes us leave the face to face world of people and invest so much time with a hand held device?

I had the pleasure of having young people at my home for a week.  Now, there is no mistake I love my phone and I love the Internet.  Facebook is my friend and all the modern world is an amazing place.  Yet, I noticed something interesting.  My daughter and her friend, I call her my new daughter, spent most of their time face forward looking at their phones instead of interacting with me and my Husband.  Even while engaged in conversations with me and my husband they were looking at their phones.  

This got me to thinking about modern relationships and communication.  I started to look around a little bit more.  I noticed that most people, including myself had this other relationship going on with our phones.  I noticed it in my break room at work among other places.  Grown adults from ages 25-60 all looking at smart phones instead of at each other.  

What is it about these devices that are so much more interesting and more entertaining than each other?  I remember being able to sit down in the break room and have a conversation with my peers or co-workers.  When did that all do away?  When did a phone or a hand held device take the place of a person or a face to face interaction?

I sit here blogging and most of the people who read my blog read this on your phones or devices and I wonder about what we have gained and what we have lost.  

Perhaps we are in a flux of change?  Perhaps we are learning something new in the way we communicate with each other.  I would like to think that Facebook was a gift that allowed me to reach out and touch those I thought I had lost.  Becoming a small time blogger has given me the opportunity to speak to anyone who will read my words on a scale I could have never imagined.  The Internet has allowed me to see and understand so many more points of view and now I feel like I can be more open minded and I hope a more loving person.  

Yes, I think for right now this phone gazing and seemingly odd way of communicating seems kinda selfish but I think it is a step into something bigger then what we have ever known before.  Maybe we are stepping into a future that only we have dreamed about in movies and books about the way we communicate with each other.  

I can only hope this time in our humanity is a step into a future of amazing possibilities.  That this "smart phone" is just the beginning.  Maybe one day we will just think it and it will be so.  I can think a text to you and you will receive my text.  I kinda like that.  I will take a picture with my eye and send it to a mind/brain Internet that will be so beautiful and perfect that no camera would ever be able to capture it the same.  

We are really just babies you know in the timeline of man.  Just toddlers really taking our first steps.  I tend to be overly thoughtful in my view of things and way to pragmatic.  I think for this I will just let it go.  It is what it is.  

When I am old, I think I will re-read this blog and find out, if I was correct or at least partially right.  

What do you think?  Do you think we are simply so engrossed with ourselves and our phones that we are selfish and so self absorbed that we cannot communicate properly anymore?  Or, do you think we are simply learning to communicate on a higher level and this is a baby step into something amazing?