Are electronic devices, and the content they make accessible, the new opium of the people?
I was in a North African country several years ago and a guide pointed to a village of crude huts and said, "If people have satellite dishes and refrigerators, then they are happy and complacent." The huts were bristling with satellite dishes.
But, is that phenomenon limited to poor North African countries? No.
Look at people in any public space here and a significant percentage of the people will be staring into brightly-lit rectangles. Even in restaurants when a group of people are having a meal together, chances are good that at least one or more of them will be doing the same thing. If people do this when they are in public, how much more do they do it in their homes when they are alone? And how much time do they [b]choose[/b] to spend home alone [b]because[/b] they have an electronic device to entertain them?
Does it concern anyone else that the ubiquity of electronic devices is numbing people to real concerns in the world and damaging relationships with other human beings in the non-virtual world?