Alain de Botton:

A flourishing life requires a capacity to recognize ... that we have our own priorities to honour in the brief time still allotted to us.

Elissa Bassist:

If someone died each time I checked my inbox, there would be no one left. How do you cancel the noise of social networking and get back down on the ground to produce?

Ian Bogost:

The shame of expecting an immediate reply to a text or a Gchat message after just having failed to provide one. The narcissism of urgency.

Jonathan Safran Foer:

Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat. ... The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits.

Each step "forward" has made it easier, just a little, to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity.