A funny thing happened on the way to the communications revolution: we stopped talking to one another. I was walking in the park with a friend recently, and his cell phone rang, interrupting our conversation. There we were walking and talking on a beautiful sunny day and... I became invisible, absent from the conversation. The telephone used to connect you to the absent. Now it makes people sitting next to you feel absent. Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel? Every advance in communications technology is a tragedy to the closeness of human interaction . With email and instant messaging over the internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct  entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom  has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine. As almost every contact we can imagine between human  beings gets automated , the alienation index  goes up. You can't  even call a person to get the phone number of another person  any more. Directory assistance is almost always fully automated. I am not against modern technology. I own a cell phone,  an ATM card, a voice mail system, and an email account. Giving them up isn't wise... they're a great help to us. It's some of  their possible consequences that make me feel uneasy. More and more. I find myself hiding behind email to do a job meant for conversation. Or being relieved that voice mail   picked up because I didn't really have time to talk. The industry devoted to helping me keep in touch is making me lonelier ...or at least facilitating my antisocial instincts. So I've put myself on technology restriction: no instant   messaging with people who live near me, no cell phoning in the presence of friends, no letting the voice mail pick up when I'm at home. The writer feels that the use of modern communications is   _  .
satisfying encouraging disappointing embarrassing