Smartphones have made us less human

     Go into any restaurant, or stand in any line. No one is talking. Everyone is looking at their smart phone. They use it to communicate on Facebook. They use it to text. They use it to for Facetime and for calling.

    The internet also is accessible via smartphones. Anything except real contact. You don't meet people in the real world any more. I will use the iPhone as my primary example, because it is what i have.

    Smartphones are part of popular culture. Popular culture is what is shared by the common media we all use. It's advertising, marketing, branding and incorporates our traditions and ways of behaving. Some people have ethnic cultures, which have become blended into American pop culture. Pizza was Italian, Pierogis are food from Eastern Europe, and fireworks started in China.

    Smartphones bring together things such as who we are, and what we learn. The culture of the warrior is different than the culture of the economist, or the politician. A Japanese artist is different from one in the Middle East.

    Smartphones are homogenizing our culture. Girls take selfies to get their faces and personalities known. Barbie dolls dictate to little girls what normal is, and PintInterest or other platforms are accessible via Smartphones to make us all see them.

   Smartphones are physical manifestations of culture that can be nonmaterial, as in the virtual world. It also smoothes out the stratifications between nationalities, race, gender and class. If you have a Smartphone, no one knows if you are poor.

   We don't sit and exchange ideas in person. We have blogs. We don't meet at parties. We have Facebook. We don't date. We use match.com. All those internet applications can fit in our pocket on our smartphone. One thing that survives is taste.

   What kind of music we like, our political beliefs, our intellectual biases and even the kind of socialization we do -- all filters through a Smartphone.

    An iPhone is a classic example. Apple sold millions of the new iPhone6, even though it is so flexible that it bends when you put it in your pocket. Though the software also is buggy, people stood in line to upgrade. The pop culture that facilitates the world at your fingertips also requires you to have an iPhone or a Smartphone to access it.

    At least in a virtual socializing world, we at least interact. I just wish it was more in person.  I wouldn't mind being segregated from the 10 percent of our culture that is elite, if that means that i prefer rock music to a classical symphony. I would rather see a group of buddies than visit a museum to see what the more-monied class of people think is tasteful.

    I normally eat at McDonalds, or a Bob Evans rather than a place that serves pheasant under glass. The fact that anyone could afford pheasants means they can splurge money on exotic game birds from China that serve no other purpose than to prove wealth and status.

   Education, to me, also is relative. I did not go to Harvard or Yale. I am attending Franklin, and I have an Associate's Degree from a technical school. But it doesn't mean that I don't know acute-trauma medicine, the stench of war, or the tools needed to be a survivor in war or daily life.

    What also suffers is pop culture - oral traditions from remote geographical areas such as Appalachia, or family history passed from Spanish or other Hispanic people from Mexico to the U.S.
   It can even be as simple as the legacy of kids' stories, fairy tales or physical keepsakes handed from one person to another.

    I fear the segregation that iPhones, Smartphones and the internet generally are bringing to younger people today. It's our job to try to stay in touch personally - and not just through technology. We are losing the emotional impact of interpersonal contact. And it saddens me.