My boyfriend hates texting. Hates it. Doesn’t understand it. "I’m not married to my phone," he says. "Why do people think they can just reach me whenever they want?"

They think that because, well, they can. We live in a technological age of hyper-connectedness. But, the deeper question is how has our connectedness affected us as communicators and people?

This century is a period of instant access, immediate gratification, and zero wait time. We fast forward through commercial breaks. We upload photos from our camera phones straight to Facebook, complete with caption and status updates. We guide missiles on video game consoles.

More importantly, we talk to each other constantly.

This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2009.