It was a moonlit night on the beach. Actually the light was coming from a gigantic globe on the lawn but for the purpose of this article, we shall pretend it’s the moon.

It was a moonlit night on the beach. On the horizon was a fairyland of lights. I later learnt it was the Jurong Island oil refinery but at the time, I thought it was a highly-electrified Disneyland.

I was having dinner at Barnacles, Shangri-La’s Rasa Sentosa Resort beachside bar and restaurant and not having a conversation with my two dinner-mates because both of them were very busy with their telephones.

Isn’t it interesting what the mobile life has made us do – ignore present friends and talk with absent ones? I often feel I have more conversations when I am not with my friends than when I am with them.

We text each other like crazy and then we are together, we look at each other like we are crazy. ‘So what are we going to talk about now that we have told each other everything we were doing that day?’

“At lunch with client.”

“Wht u eting?”

“CC (chilli crab).”

“Wa, HTWWEC (how to talk when eating crab)?”

“CTN (can’t talk now). HD (hands dirty).”

The 25-year-old Japanese man Tomohiro Kato who drove into busy Akihabara district in Tokyo and killed seven people in a stabbing frenzy sent a lot of text messages – to himself.

His mobile phone was his best friend. The newspapers called him a “mobile phone addict”. He posted 200 messages a day on a cell phone website, airing his frustrations to an all-reading but un-caring world. They say loneliness and anger drove him to do what he did.

I went to the beach the other day with another friend who spent most of the time taking photographs with her mobile and listening to music through her mobile. We have become mobile photographers and MP3 players.

The new iPhone and the new Mobile Mail, unveiled by Steve Jobs last week, I am told, can do “everything”, according to any Machead you ask. I assume that means if you point it at an egg, it can boil it with gamma-rays as well.

Convergence of technology is happening and guess what, it's converging on you, me and folks like Tomohiro Kato. It's making us mobile warriors with weapons of mass utility.

One of my dinner friends paused his texting, looked up at me for a second and said, “What’s the etiquette these days? In the past, people frowned at this but it seems to be accepted these days by a lot of people.”

It’s called “unsocial creep”, I think. Bit by bit, we allow that which would not have been acceptable become acceptable until it becomes the norm.

Norm, however, does not mean normal. Just like common sense. Doesn’t mean it’s common.

So I cannot let this post pass without a contextual comment.

These behaviors are all part of our individual and collective evolution. In the same way we learned to crawl, then walk, we are mastering new skills. Some of these skills are so new that we have not yet had Ms Manners tell us how to use them appropriately. What is normal and what is acceptable.

Consider the other technologies we as mankind have mastered. Just because fire can be used for heat and light doesn't mean it can't be also used for bad (Arson, torture etc) or used inappropriately (burning the food!).

Any item can be diverted from its original (assumed to be good) intention and into something bad. The converse is also true. There is no guarantee that we humans as operators will automatically get it right and use the technology correctly. Especially not the first time out. It doesn't matter if we are early adopters or long tailers.

Texting can be just plain rude to the person you are with, but what about the person at the other end of the text message, ignoring them is just as rude. (And what if its your mother texting you!!!!).

MP3 players provide a strong sense of personal enjoyment for us all, yet headphones are also very anti-social.

Taking pictures are sometimes done at the expense of the experience itself. IE take a memento now to recall it later - when in fact you (and me) didn't really experience the original event the first time while in the presence of the first person time and space (sorry that was clumsy but I think you get my drift). How sad is that?

"Common Sense" is accepted wisdom, it is acceptable by the mass of people. However that doesn't make it necessarily right or the best it could be. Normalcy today is chaos tomorrow and was heresy yesterday. Its really as the HSBC ads demonstrate - two faces always of every event and person. Lord help us if the really find other dimensions.

Thanks and cheers!

"Love (to be with) the one you're with" as the title of the song (almost) goes - for the company , conversation and perhaps the shared experience or confidences BUT if you must indulge, or it is critical to your work, income or life threatening to ignore it, in your latest "tech fix" as you described, then excuse yourself and leave the table!
If your Mother really needed you , she would call, not text! - the rest is just rude behaviour. And tell them so - if you are not as guilty yourself.
In the latter case, learn withdrawal - it is a bad habit , like many others,
cheers and Avagudwegend!
Kevin