Sitting in a rest area, I suddenly looked around me and realized that in one car I was connected to satellites with two devices and the internet with two more.

There is a fundamental shift that has been taking place for since the days of traveling lap desks used by “connected” travelers in carriages and on clipper ships. These people worked on correspondences to family, friends and business associates as they traveled, optimizing their time. I can imagine that occasionally a fellow traveler thought; “Why would anyone need to be communicating with people who aren’t even here?”
Fast forward to today and you’ll find similar situations and many more people who are connected on the go. It seems that before the last of the amniotic fluid has dried from behind our ears, we have found our first hand-held device and are busily communicating. Like airborne sound waves, our digital signals propagate from our current locations to myriad other locations to affect other people. There is simply no limit to communication any more. The “analogue connected” from our past would have marveled at both the varied means of our communication choices and the instant nature of their delivery.
We live in a time of “amazed realization” of change with little time left over for dissecting the ramifications of the changes on humanity. There is much to negotiate by way of child rearing, relationship maintenance, workplace expansion etc. and no digital Dr. Phil in sight.
What seems to suffice for now is the network, in the forms of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Plurk and and online communities like this one, where people practice a form of group therapy to help negotiate their digital lives. It’s as if humans have grown new limbs that can either give us near superpowers or render us clumsy without some digital dance lessons. The best thing is that digital dance instructors are everywhere and they are willing to help us learn the new steps.
In education all of this means we can either ignore the new realities of always-on connected humans or we can assist kids on their journey toward a positive digital adulthood. What I have noticed is that once a person puts the new limbs on and seeks a few dance instructors, it’s not long until they are moving gracefully across the digital dance floor.