Nov. 6 marked the beginning of a clash of the techies, as digital connoisseurs began to compare the features and capabilities of the newly released Droid, made by Motorola and sold by Verizon Wireless, with those of Apple’s iPhone.

The commercial is as epic as The Lord of the Rings and leaves the impression such an amazing piece of technology is indestructible – mostly because it looks like it was created by Transformers. According to PC World, the Droid weighs less than six ounces, boasts an 854-by-480-pixel touch screen, a five-megapixel camera capable of DVD-quality video recording, a sliding keyboard and a voice-activated GPS system – bad news for Garmin and TomTom.

It can multitask like no one’s business, connects with Google’s Android Market and about 10,000 applications, and the battery offers 385 minutes of talk time – just a few of its many features.

Maybe it’s because I came to ACU before freshmen were showered with iPhones, but all these new capabilities mean to me is more awkward conversations with people whose phones are attached to them like an appendage. It’s great you have the world at your fingertips, but how are your people skills?

We’re all guilty of it. We cling to our phones, waiting for a tidbit of information we’ve convinced ourselves we can’t live without.

We’ve become so addicted to the ability to talk to anyone and look up anything at the tap of a finger that we’ve come to believe it’s a bad thing when we aren’t reachable. We get a tiny high knowing we’re the first to share some juicy news, but it only lasts a few minutes till we’re Googling, Facebooking and Tweeting for our next hit.

But one of these days, your iPhone is going to break, and you’re going to be left with a God-given sound box you forgot how to use.

You might have to pick up a newspaper – one that isn’t free and shoved in your face after Chapel. Maybe you’ll have to get lost in a city to learn your way around, instead of having some robotic British woman lead you to your destination like a child on a leash. Maybe you won’t have the chance to “thumbs up” your old college roommate’s pictures of her new baby – you might try congratulating her in person.

I’m not technologically savvy, and I realize regressing in our communication development is quite unlikely, but for the sake of human interaction, give it a shot.