Did you ever travel without your laptop or any familiar mean to get connected to net? It's a blessing isn't it? You would feel a dire feeling but eventually it will cause you to pay attention more to your material surroundings.
In a somehow related matter, I have also been thinking seriously about all these recent internet fuzzes, What and how much should I follow the flow, Facebook, Twitter, those kind of things. All my good friends have been tempting me to use them. I almost did many times but fortunately I haven't. Sometimes being labeled or feeling old-fashion is not that bad at all. I grew up in the nascent age of email and I think I will be proud to stay that way, to always see email as a phenomenon of the century, to continually be fascinated by it, a real revolution in communication. Maybe some of my "younger" friends will see this attitude as I see my "older" friends relation with other previous communication tech phenomenon such fax machines.
Another obvious downside of all those social networking gimmicks is that you are not too socially networking. I got to find a name for that later. I still prefer the primitive way to socially network, whenever possible, which is to meet and chat over a meal or coffee, to converse through sounds, eyesights, and bodies. I prefer the primal intensity of human communication versus the spread-out frequency of virtual e-bytes exchanges.
On Sep 09 National Geographic Traveler magazine, they did a page on Tweeter. One part of the article that caught my attention warns that, "twittering so much that you're not living the moment , which is akin to seeing your vacation through the camera viewfinder." That's kind of true isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I know it is argueable... But come on, think about it longer. It has some truths to it. Go email! You are still the best!