Two-headed problem with the wired life

In a recent online article, Joshua Sowin accurately describes the two-headed problem with personal relationships in North America:

The first is that we have little real communal interaction. The second is that we have little quality isolation. A good life needs a healthy balance of communion and isolation. When these are not in balance, both community and inner life suffers. We have replaced true community with virtual interaction, and true isolation with distraction. What we need is a revival of both true community and true isolation.

Such an impoverishment has consequences for the church, of course:

Few of us pray as we ought. And few of us think as we ought. Thinking deeply about something requires silence. Many of us rarely think about something for an extended period of time — we have opinions on all kinds of things, but most of them come from a very shallow knowledge of facts, usually gained from the shallow, entertaining medium of television. The question is, do we make time to think? Pray? Read? Silence is important for all these disciplines.

Mr. Sowin's article says nothing strikingly new, but it's nevertheless right on target and worth reading. Several bloggers, by the way, have already linked to the article, and I'm sorry I don't remember where I first saw the link.