There’s an interesting piece by Michael Rosenwald in The Washington Post today entitled, “Obsessed with smartphones, oblivious to the here and now.” Below is a portion, followed by my take on life without a smartphone:

Doomsayers have long predicted that technological progress would turn us into shut-ins who rarely venture from our game-playing, IM-ing digital cocoons out into the physical world. But the stereotype of the computer-addicted recluse in the basement has been blown away; smartphones make it possible to turn off the physical world while walking through it.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that “a significant proportion of people who visit public and semipublic spaces are online while in those spaces.” Parks. Libraries. Restaurants. Houses of worship. The doomsayers didn’t foresee the portability that smartphones bring to digital obsession. Nor did they foresee app stores. More than 2 billion applications have been downloaded for iPhones, and the Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, expects 7 billion app downloads via all mobile devices by 2013 — an overwhelming new universe of diversion.

The competition this digital world poses stretches into life’s most intimate places. Elizabeth Sloan, a local marriage counselor, worked with a couple after the husband began surfing his smartphone during sex. ”I wish I was joking,” Sloan said. “This is a real hot topic right now for marriage counselors — and the complaints are coming from men and women. You hear this a lot: ‘I can’t reach you. I can’t find you. You can be sitting two inches from me, but you are not there. Where are you?’ Spouses are checking out at dinner, on vacation. It’s really become a 24-7 thing.”

I don’t have a smartphone. I have an old, beaten Samsung cell phone that doesn’t even have Internet access. I sometimes get funny looks when I take the phone out in public. I occasionally worry that I’m being “judged.” Some days, when I see a friend on his shiny iPhone, I get envious and want to pout. But most days I’m thankful for my ugly little flip-phone that I can barely text on. I have enough difficulty staying “present” for myself and the people around me without a computer in my hand. For me, the permanent “connection” promised by smartphones isn’t worth the price—disconnection from what I’m feeling, experiencing, and actually needing. I don’t need that new app. I need the present moment.