Перевод текста. over the past fifteen years, my research has documented that, for many, online life and smartphone connections have got in the way of things that people feel are important. we’re so busy communicating that we don’t have time to think, we don’t have time to sit down and have a conversation. we’d rather text than talk. it makes us feel more in control. a young woman skypes her grandmother in another city but does her email during these conversations. she tells me that she hardly pays attention to what her grandmother is saying. the young woman does not feel good about these conversations, although her grandmother seems pleased. a mother explains that she cannot resist the ‘little red light’ telling her that she has a new message on her blackberry, even when she is driving on the motorway with her children in the car. the unread message, that red light, has come to stand for our feelings of hope. that someone wants us, that something new is coming into our lives. a woman explains that when she was in hospital, her husband worked from her bedside but was so busy with his device that he didn’t talk to her. children complain about parents texting at breakfast and dinner. parents at the playground push a swing with one hand and scroll through their messages with the other. i go to a funeral and people are texting, hiding their phones under their hymn books. i remember, not so long ago, when a student remarked on the fi rst time a friend interrupted a conversation to take a call. ‘it made me feel like he was putting me on pause,’ he said. now, we all treat each other as ‘pausables’. an impatient high-school student says to me, ‘if you really need to get in touch with me, just shoot me a text.’ he sounds just like my university colleagues who tell me they would rather avoid face-to-face meetings and would prefer to communicate with ‘real-time texts’. i do not want to condemn technology but think that we have put in place a powerful technology and have not yet learned to use it in the best way. but these are early days for the internet. it is up to us to make and shape it. i wrote my new book to mark a time of opportunity. we need to form a more empowering partnership with technology. our job is to shape it to our human purposes.