Lyons says the biggest drawback to her hyperconnected lifestyle is not a lack of solitude but the way in which her in-the-flesh friends sometimes feel lonely in her presence while she's buried in her Treo. But perhaps she's learning to look up from her screens and into their eyes a bit more: A few months after her friend admitted feeling second-best to disembodied messages, she reports: "We're actually doing better now. I started to pay attention to him."

Being "buried" in your Treo when interacting with friends is what we call "rude". I'm glad my friends don't do it. Anyone that addicted to a device has real problems.