They sit, Indian file, hugging their windows, one to each seat, alone but connected. The daily commute is full of daisy duke shorts and a sea of cellulite held together by the fascination for technology. It’s their first act, to reach in and activate their phone, their tablet, their laptop, earphones, each separated and alone in their parallel worlds.

Most of my working life has been spent in the isolation of the daily car commute. Now, I choose to travel by public transport. This is part of the initiation into my tribe of the invisible. Ours is a tribe close to three score years – we have reached the zone of old so clearly defined by the marketers. We wear old clothes, carry real books and are irritated by daily obsession, not with technology, but the obsessive need to respond.

 So they sit there, uncomfortable with their isolation so they must connect, instantly: I am on the bus, click, emails; I am on the bus, click, Facebook update; I am on the bus, click, texting. Unable to be disconnected from the digital world because you might miss something – anything – you link with international communities; collect new friends and followers as you travel the busway; you share reading lists, photos and to do lists; update your Facebook status, adjust your LinkedIn resume, double check your twitter feed, your Instagram account and the one hundred other apps demanding your digital attention; and buy an overpriced shirt from an overpriced online store, all before your city stop.

All this with not a word, no eye contact, no human interaction. Back in the day, the trip to work was one of solitude, self-reflection. Now, I suspect those who are saturated with information find being alone difficult. They cannot be out of contact, not for a second. There are no time boundaries, no space boundaries – no timeout. As the social researcher, Hugh Mackay points out, being busy, real or otherwise, not only creates a sense of entitlement, but also generations who are afraid of stillness, solitude and inactivity.  But the glowing screens and busyness insulates them, distance and distract them from the needs of those around them. He calls it “decompassion”.  So among their lists, their impressive busyness is the constant flow of information– it’s all there in the palm of your hand. Your place on the digital totem pole is now determined by your thumb dexterity, At one end, the slow hunt and peck – baby boomers struggling with the avalanche of technology; at the other, the frightening speed of the “I am entitled to a million dollar home with city views near my barista after four years of working “Gen Y.

These are the members of the alone together Tribe of One – connected by keyboards and touchscreens. The halo of light protects them from the reality of the actual society. Human conversation requires patience, skill, nuance, time.

Technology breeds infidelity. We are able to be with one another and simultaneously connected to wherever we really want to be. Soon a required skill will be to look someone in the eye while texting someone else. It has changed us, The way we work, the way we live, how we meet, how we use technology to clean up the mess and disaster that makes up human relationships – the dumping by text is so much better, so cleaner, so smoother than the awkward, painful face to face conversation putting to the sword emotions and dreams.

We are looking at changing traffic systems to accommodate those who are so busy, so important that they are a danger to themselves and others as they are looking at their phone rather than looking ahead. Someone described it as the anxiety of the silence of the unreturned text or email or the ignored status update. No response means you are no longer worthy, no longer at the top of someone’s to-do-list. The cyber world created the virtual world –to be examined, explored from the set of a suburban bus, a place of cyber love and random hookups; a place where virtual people can remake themselves; cyber brush the flaws and personality, and career pimples; have that six pack; be THAT person, they dream of.

Walter Mitty thrives online. A few clicks, photoshop, a few snappy paragraphs. It allows you to be, not as you are, not as you should be, but as you dream of being. It changes the blandness of the urban journey, wraps around a generation that marks its progression with the tissue thin protection of competitive narcissism – here is a photograph of my breakfast, here is another of me drinking coffee, at work, at lunch, at dinner, here is me in bed, here is me pretending I have 3600 friends; here is me sitting at a computer…..