This video I Forgot My Phone has created a stir.  It plays on the idea that technology has pulled us from the realities of daily life.

This sentiment has become the fodder of popular writers who wax poetic about the days when we were free.  When we’re disconnected, we’re light, real and human.  We we’re connected, it seems, we are chained down and miserable.

Perhaps we should find a way to use technology that doesn’t make us miserable.

For starts, we might find a way to shape a balanced relationship with the technology we adopt.  Balance must be effective on a daily, hourly and minute-to-minute basis.  Our perspective on social tools needs a steady solution, not one controlled by a pressure valve.

Sure I feel a type of freedom when I’m away from my networks.  But I feel a different freedom when I’m engaged with my communities.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive.  Both are key parts of my daily existence.

And real unplugging is increasingly impossible.  The line separating our online and IRL lives is becoming harder to define.  None of this is put together by anyone better than Nathan Jurgenson.  He delivers hard reality to the tired belief that we’re all alone together.  As he suggests, we fetishize IRL.

Technology is not to blame for our need to run, hide, unplug or disconnect.  We’re to blame.  We create our own noise, distractions and diversions.