Last week at an Ani DiFranco concert in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, I was seated in the back looking over the entire crowd, and I noticed that among the thousandsome Ani fans, at any given time, you could see at least least a hundred or so little digital screens. Each of these hundreds of digital cameras and cell phones were recording and sharing the experience with dozens of other people who weren't there.

My girlfriend was telling me about an evening that she was taking the ferry from downtown out to where we live in Red Hook. It's a beautiful little trip with some spectacular views of Manhattan, the bridges, and the Brooklyn waterfront. She saw that they were going to pass close by a huge tanker ship, so naturally she got out her camera phone to get a picture. She was having trouble getting a good shot, one that really captured the awe and grandeur of the gigantic vessel; by the time she put the phone away and looked up again she realized that she had missed the actual experience of feeling dwarfed by the tanker.

The Observer had a great article this week about another universal moment of technological interruption: the laptop at the dinner party.

Somewhere between Facebook and YouTube, the notebook computer became so essential to our lives that we began inviting it to dinner. It came quietly, ingratiating itself into the social ritual with such ease that we barely noticed. Until one night, halfway through the main course, seven dinner companions were suddenly crowded around our unassuming little MacBook watching “Dick in a Box.”

Connecting with people virtually while temporarily disconnecting from people in the real world is quickly becoming pervasive. As noted in this article from Slate, "Faxes, e-mail, cell phones, VoIP, Web video, etc., have been productive and fun but have also dragged many of us into a nonstop orgy of connectedness that can sometimes crowd out tenderness and meaning." Though both experiences have genuine merit, we should recognize that they are qualitatively different. Interaction with the virtual world is cerebral and intimate, while interactions with the real world can be visceral and communal. There's no internet experience that can replace the gut feeling of being among a crowd of other living human beings, especially when that crowd has a common focus. This change in our behavior is not merely anecdotal, these instances are indicators of a fundamental change in human behavior. As personal technology evolves, checking in/out from the virtual/real world will become seamless; but the differences in how each environment affects our thinking and perceiving will persist.