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Editorial: Digital anxiety The world is too much with us …

The world is too much with us …

More than 200 years ago, William Wordsworth was concerned about the siren call of materialism, the “getting and spending,” that was distracting many people from the beauty of life, nature and everything else that we should hold dear.

Imagine how he would feel had computers, smartphones, e-mail, Facebook and myriad other digital distractions been a part of his daily life?

For those of us old enough to remember a time before laptops, tablets, cell phones, Twitter, etc., take a minute to think back on how life used to be. You had a landline telephone at home and another at work. And, if you were in a bind, you could run to a payphone, plunk down a quarter and reach out to someone … provided you knew where they were. Or, you could drive over and see that person. That’s it. And, even though we were so “out of touch” back then, we weren’t in a constant state of anxiety about “missing something importan...

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