"Excuse the self-reference, but a few weeks ago I was in a departure lounge at Toronto airport watching passengers deplane from an arriving flight. Fully one third were jawing away on cell phones while still on the walkway and before they even entered the terminal. As it was 6:30 pm on a Friday evening, it was hard to believe they were fulfilling office duties. Twenty years ago, they would all have been lighting up cigarettes, but we would have recognized that for what it was. My thoroughly depressing thought was that uncomfortable, crowded commuter flights have replaced chapels and taverns as refuges for contemplation.[...] We spend a lot of time here defending freedom, democracy and family against statism and the self-regarding life. Are there darker and more intractable issues beneath? Is it possible for a society to be free, self-reliant and resilient when solitude and contemplation have been completely destroyed and when life consists of fevered multi-tasking from dawn to dusk, broken only by desperate attempts to escape it in the most uncomfortable, controlled venues?" -Peter Burnet