I warned that cellphone danger is in the conversation itelf

This week's NY Times had a front-page story about the scores of tests that show that talking on the phone (any kind) takes the mind away from external processing (of cars or people on the road) and into an altered state. According to the Times, "Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content."

In Digital Dharma -- and on this blog, I wrote that cellphone use takes us deep into sec0nd chakra hunger for emotional connection, to the sounds of childhood lullabies and mothers cooing to their babies... how the telephone takes us to "dream space," where we create the image of our lover to go along with the "whisper in the ear." New research reported by the New York Times (6/6/08) confirms this model:

"It may be, the study said, that when people talk to someone who is not present, the visual-processing parts of their brain create a mental representation of where the other person might be."