Many of us succumb to the enticements of ever-advancing technology, but when the last tweet of the day is sent, the last call placed on the iPhone, a full life may remain elusive.

“Technology is a double-edged sword,” says historian and author Michael A. Budd, a professor at Newport’s Salve Regina University.

“In one way, it cuts beautifully: in terms of potentially enhancing our lives, making us able to do things in a better way, to have more time to do the things that we value, that really sustain us. And then it has a jagged edge that cuts in a different direction. It can hurt people.”

Budd is no Luddite, the name given to 19th-century British craftsmen who fought the Industrial Revolution that has become synonymous with opposition to technology. “I’m out there using all the latest social media,” he says. With Skype, the video-conferencing service, he “visits” his mother 3,000 miles away via the Internet.

“I can communicate with my family in Oregon on Skype, but there’s a little bit of a lag,” Budd says. “It’s just a little bit dislocating; it’s not really the same. We can see each other, we can talk, it’s the dream of my childhood –– it’s the picture phone! But it is not the same as being live and in person.

“When we can use these things and they help us connect when we couldn’t otherwise connect, then they’re great. But if they become our only way of connection –– if we’re always ‘hypermediated’ in our relations with others –– I think there are potentially problems there.”

JAMES F. CACCAMO, professor of social ethics at Philadelphia’s Saint Joseph’s University, calls it romance.

“Right now, we are in the middle of our honeymoon period, as it were,” he says. “We love our cell phones. We are enamored with the mobile Internet. We are fascinated by being able to find out anything at any time. It is all new and we have fallen head over heels. And as in all romances, we are woefully out of balance.”

Caccamo is no Luddite, either. Before becoming a scholar, he was a computer programmer. He communicated with The Journal via e-mail from his 8-core Mac Pro tower with its 2 monitors and 5 external drives.

“I do not advocate doing away with communication and information technology and living a life disconnected from the grid,” he says. “These technologies really do help us maintain significant relationships and have, in some uses, helped in the effort to alleviate suffering in the world.”

The balance lost, Caccamo says, is between diversion and introspection. It’s easy (and fun) to share what’s on your mind on Facebook. Not so easy (or always fun) to look inside yourself, or to connect with someone in person.

“I think it is fair to say that today, we don’t use technology as much as it uses us. We let it determine how and how much we engage it, rather than using it in specific ways to serve our purposes.”

IN THE CENTURIES before the Industrial Revolution, Budd says, time passed slowly: the seasons progressed and people were born and died, as always, but village life was essentially the same generation after generation.

By the end of the 19th century, advancing technology had helped create a consumer economy. A powerful popular press had emerged, with daily newspapers a fixture in many households. Constant change became the norm.

Photography also profoundly affected human behavior: for the first time in history, ordinary people could record and share their own images and the images of others. In illustrated publications, you could see strangers in large numbers –– and want to learn more about them. Or emulate or envy them.

“It’s in our human nature to love new and exciting things,” Budd says. “We like toys. We like clever gadgets. We’re drawn to the new and the innovative. But it’s all about what we do with it.”

He sees a risk in spending too many hours one-on-one with a machine. A face on screen is, after all, only pixels.

“You’re connected, and yet you’re alone,” Budd says. “People are isolating. They find it perhaps more difficult to create relationships –– real flesh-and-blood relationships. I think that these things may be chipping away at things that might have a perennial value, that are important: our ability to carry through with and sustain a relationship, even when things go bad.”

As new technologies arrive, Budd says, people will continue to desire them.

“The imperative that we must have the latest thing is linked to a sense that we must satisfy ourselves –– and nothing else will, besides these things. What will make us happy is having these technologies. That they will make us into what we seek to be. And what is it that we seek to be? Not who we are, but this beautiful thing that’s projected.”

Disconnect more often, he advises.

“Live and in-person is way much better,” he says.

“TWO HUNDRED FIFTY years ago,” Caccamo says, “our role models would have been people close to us. We would have imitated the wise in our communities, and probably could have attained what they had. Today, we have so many images of vast wealth, power, and bodily perfection at our fingertips and in the media, and none of them are anything we could ever attain. Our lives simply pale in comparison. How could they not?

“Because we are inundated with the unattainable, lust and envy have become our daily companions. Because we expect rapid change, frustration and impatient anger have become part of our normal social discourse. This has not made our lives better. Relationships still take time, and spiritual development is still a lifelong process.”

His advice? The same as Professor Budd’s.

“We need to disconnect at regular intervals. Take time away from imagining other people’s lives. Slowing down and focusing on the people in front of us and ourselves on a regular basis is a central practice that we need to cultivate now that such times aren’t part of the natural shape of our days.

“In the end, offline friendships and familial relationships will be the ones that last, because they are the ones that won’t be able to simply log off.”

More about Michael Budd and Salve Regina University’s doctor of philosophy in humanities program is at www.salve.edu/graduatestudies/programs/doc/

James F. Caccamo’s site is: www.sju.edu/academics/cas/theology/faculty/jcaccamo.html

G. Wayne Miller welcomes suggestions for future What’s Next stories.

gwmiller@projo.com