A funny thing happened on the way to the communication 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 suddenly, 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 communication 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 emotional distance 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 conversations or being relieved with voice-mail picking up because I don't really have time to talk. The industry devoted to helping me keep in touch is making me lonelier. The passage implies that   _  .
modern technology is bridging the people modern technology is separating the people modern technology is developing too fast modern technology is interrupting people