How many remember that phrase? I meant a cup--a mug, actually, of coffee and a plain donut that was dipped in the coffee before each bite. That was my practice back in the day. And that practice seemed downright elegant compared to some of my coffee experience in the field in the Army. I can clearly remember being in the field using Signal Corp wire and a no. 10 (large) can to use grounds for the third time to make truly horrendous coffee over an open fire. And I remember the event with a certain fondness. The coffee, if you can call it that, was frightful, but the experience with the guys with clearly memorable. This memory had nothing to do with the quality of the coffee, but the quality of the experience. “Liberating” the wire from supply, rigging the can to hold it over the improvised outdoor fire. Loud discussions of how long to boil these already over used grounds, using a metal canteen cup holder for the scalding coffee, and, finally, coming up with ever more interesting ways to describe the horrid, acidic taste. The first few who announced their descriptions did not stand a chance; each successive description was more colorful, and had less to do with the muddy liquid than the unlovely setting for all of this, the hour, the overall quality of food and coffee in the Army, and the Army itself.

But we connected. In fact, some of those men are still in my life--and I in theirs.

Today when I want coffee, I sometimes find myself ordering a “Tall Flat White.” And I don’t really know all what’s in it. But it tastes good, I can put it in my travel mug where it will stay hot longer, and I don’t feel like I am embarrassing myself in that upscale environment by ordering a Cuppa Joe and a Sinker. They might know what a Cuppa Joe is there, but they haven’t sinker in the house. Perhaps I should try a “Grande Joseph, and Floating Croissant.” But it just doesn’t have the same ring. And the Tall Flat White and a croissant is about three times as much.

But I am getting the upscale experience, right? But what is that? Well, it is truly different from drinking terrible coffee sitting on the ground in an open field in the Army. And it is different from having a Cuppa Joe and A Sinker at a coffee and donut joint. The upscale environment has better seating, better Wi-Fi and a much wider variety of foodstuffs. And it all comes at a price. Not only are we paying more in terms of how many hours of our work time each week we need to invest in our monthly coffee and a snack habit, but in terms of human interaction. When I go into those upscale coffee environments, almost everyone is on the Internet or asking for the password. Put simply, we are trading human connections for Internet connections. And we actually think we have made progress.

Most of us have seen pictures of the rare small restaurants that have signs reading, “No Internet. Talk to each other.” You mean to a live person in front of me? You mean like to others in my group? Or a stranger? What if I don’t like that person? How can I be cool with someone who may not like me? How can I say something witty or snarky and then be on my way? Where is the Unfriend button? How do I block them? How can I make my winning political point anonymously?

Social media is a type of safe space. It is a world where we can be in contact with hundreds or thousands of people in a necessarily “low touch” way. Lots of contacts, but only in a glancing blow kind of interaction. How do we learn/relearn to successfully handle the physical world, with far fewer contacts but in a “high touch” context. Real people, right there in front of me. With their need to be heard, to be understood, to be appreciated. As people, not just as contacts. They want to be seen and heard as people, just as you and I do. And we can’t do that if we are on the Internet and not looking around. Looking for eye contact, looking for human contact.