Its mid-morning. You pull (or walk) up to your favorite coffee shop, independent or chain. Claim that favorite table or give glare at the guy who’s hogging it. Give greetings to the barristas and the folks you know dotted around the furniture-strewn room. Pull out the laptop (or blackberry). Saunter up to the counter and place an order for a tall latte. (I’m boring. So sue me.) If this is familiar to you then the latest edition of The Economist has a section dedicated to you and other urban nomads (aka, “techno-bedouins”). I prefer the latter since its so melodramatic.

Are you an urban nomad? The chances are that if you’re a graduate student (or even a professional or faculty member) you either are or occasionally are. Wireless communication is altering the way that we work. But more than that, its changing the ways we relate to one another and re-shaping the fabric of American society.

Urban planners have noticed significant variations in traffic patterns over the last thirty years. (See “The New Oasis,” 9). Alan Piraski has studied traffic patterns over thirty years and has observed three distinct and shifting patterns. In the 1980s (when work was in the city and domestic life was in the suburbs) there was a “classic diurnal flow.” Into work at 8 am and back out at 5pm. In the 90s jobs shifted away from cities (leaving many city centers severely depressed economically) and out into the suburbs creating a “circumferential pattern,” workers using beltways to get from their subdivisions to the office parks also located in the suburbs.

With his 2006 book, Piraski noted that traffic patterns had become increasingly complex. In many cities, such as Atlanta (hard to believe) or Portland, the number of car trips had actually stopped increasing. Traffic remained heavy, but was spread over wider ranges of time. People are now tending travel in “daisy chain patterns,” leaving the house in the morning, dropping the kids off at school, going to the office for a bit, running some errands, working from a home office or third location (like the Borders I’m sitting in as I write this). Individual travel patterns change every day.

That traffic patterns have altered this significantly over the past thirty years demonstrates the degree to which technology is influencing us and the communities in which we live. The question begged by this trend is how are we to evaluate it?

Sociologists are concerned that the diffusion of people into various third places (like coffee shops) may mean that we’re spending time with others, but time that is “psychologically evacuated.” There are eleven people sitting in the cafe at Borders (where I’m writing this article). That’s eleven people who are physically present but psychologically largely absent. We’re all here reading, typing, texting, and (annoyingly) some are even using their phones. We’re not looking, talking, or interacting with each other at all. Some scholars suggest that we simply have not developed to a point where such situations make us happy. There’s the psychological and neurological arousal created by being with others, but none of the rewards. Bummer.

I live this life. Moving around campus with my phone and my laptop. Sometimes in my office (which I find sort of confining) or sometimes in a coffee shop or food court, even the library. I talk on the phone, email, use facebook, but rarely text. I even roam off campus to Borders, Starbucks and to independent coffee shops like Rochet.

I bet you largely live this life, given that I often see faculty, professionals, and grad students in these places. What’s it like for you? Check out The Economist and give me your thoughts about how these trends are contributing to or detracting from a rich experience of life as communal beings.

Next Post: What About the Stranger? How technology is making us closer to those we know but further alienating us from the stranger in our midst.