Feel "out of touch" if you haven't checked your answering machine or e-mail in the last 12 hours? Can't cook a meal without technological gadgets? You may be a victim of "technosis," say psychologists Michelle Weil and Larry Rosen.
The authors of TechnoStress: Coping with Technology @Work @Home @Play ($22.95) say such over-attachment and dependence on technology can make individuals feel less adequate than peers who are able to keep high-tech living in perspective.
Such attachment to technology grows slowly, the authors say, but soon individuals may be unable to tell where personal initiative ends and technology begins. When that happens, people "become more machine-oriented and less sensitive to their own needs and the needs of others," the authors say.
The book, naturally for sale through the Web site, attempts to explain why technology sucks us in as it does and how we can maintain an even psychological keel in an increasingly digital world.
