Commentary

The most dangerous inventions are the ones that promise to connect us, but instead pull us away from the people sitting right beside us.

I don’t like to admit this, but I often find myself pulled away from my children by a glowing little screen. I’ll be on the couch at night, a cartoon playing that makes them laugh, but doesn’t grab me, and the temptation creeps in. Just one email. Just a quick scroll. Maybe check how Bitcoin is doing or glance at the portfolio. It feels harmless, but it pulls me out of the moment. The little rectangle in my hand whispers constantly: Don’t miss this.

Sometimes I win. I leave my phone upstairs during bath time or plug it in across the house while I go outside with the kids. But too often, I lose. I tell myself, “one last thing, then I’ll be present.” Except there’s always one last thing.

And that’s with a phone I can physically put down. What scares me about the future is where all this is headed. Neural links. Glasses that overlay the internet onto everything we see. Devices we never take off. The temptation won’t be in another room—it’ll be right there, in us. No escape hatch.

I think back to my childhood in upstate New York. My parents ran a fashion business from our farm. They worked long hours, they traveled often, but when the day was over, it was over. The clunky desktop stayed in the office. The phone was bolted to the wall. When we sat down for dinner, it was just us. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings my dad had kung fu classes, so we’d meet him in town and eat together afterward. Other nights we’d go to the movies. Work was always part of the dinner conversation—it shaped us—but the calls and orders stayed where they belonged: back at the office.

Our family was built around work. We worked weekends, packed orders in the barn, prepared shipments for the week. Sometimes it was just the four of us in there, taping boxes and folding clothes. That was important. But when we left the barn—our barn-turned-factory—the work stayed behind. Did my mother design late into the night? Yes. I remember waking up and seeing her studio light glowing across the driveway, knowing she was still at it. But even then, the time we spent together—whether working side by side, eating dinner, or swimming in the pond—wasn’t chopped up by buzzing phones or endless notifications. It was whole.

That rhythm—work and then rest, productivity and then presence—is mostly gone now. Work slips into our pockets, sneaks into every quiet moment. And it’s not just work anymore; it’s the constant scroll, the dopamine hit of seeing who liked what.

Even writing this, I can hear the resistance in me. Part of me doesn’t want to admit my failures, doesn’t want to say this out loud. But I’m saying it anyway. Because I can’t be the only one. And because putting it into words feels like a declaration: This is a problem for me, and I have to do better.

It’s not only about being distracted from my children. It’s about the example I’m setting for them. Their world will be louder, more distracting, harder to resist. If I don’t model presence, how will they ever learn it? I’m blessed with a husband, children, and a community that keeps me rooted. And still, I can vanish into the phone silo. For those without close family or community, I can only imagine how tempting it is to melt into the illusion of social media and call it connection.

But deep down, people are starving for more. Real presence. Real gathering. Real faces across a table. That’s why I keep inviting people out to the farm, even when it’s hard to get them to drive all the way here. Whether it’s lunch, a workshop, or a wedding under the oak trees—I believe these moments matter. They remind us of what’s real. And bigger gatherings matter too. Conferences like our upcoming Food is Medicine in September, or Confluence, give us space to sit with one another, share ideas, and remember what connection actually feels like.

A world that isn’t real is always pulling us away from the world that is. There will always be more chores, more emails, more reasons to push presence off until later. But at some point you have to draw a line and say: For today, we’re done.

The future will always promise us more access, more efficiency, more connection. But the real question is: connection to what? If being “always on” means we’re never fully present, then the cost is too high.

Always On, Never Present

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