My Internet connection went down recently. Normally, this would provoke a hopping mad rage against my Internet service. In this case, I was piggybacking off some stranger's unsecured network who, for some reason, suddenly turned his router off.

Maybe he left town, maybe he was murdered in a jealous rage by his wife's lover, maybe I should cut back on Law and Order marathons. I don't know. What I do know is I've been disconnected to "the world" and only in the daily trudges to the local cafe with Wi-Fi do I once again feel a part of the community.

We have a greater awareness of each other through the Internet; we bond, we share, we communicate with more people now than in the previous 100 years. But in reflection I think it's isolated us in ways that seem incidental but add up to a widening social gulf.

In the absence of e-mail, instant messaging and Facebook, I've been forced to reach for that other tool of communication: the phone. And it's been a happy awakening. Instead of sending and receiving faceless messages on my laptop, I can hear the joyful lilt of a voice in small celebration, long pauses in hesitant replies and share in the sadness of a crying friend, no emotions required.

I find myself being more humane on the phone, certainly more open than with e-mail, where messages are spell checked and wisely scrutinized before being sent with an eye to its possible distribution.

When we were kids, the phone system was basic, actually less so. Occasionally, when speaking on the phone, an unknown caller would suddenly join in. This was called a party line. It cost less than a dedicated line but you took your chances if other people wanted to call at the same time you did.

It was weird having a couple of strangers on the line, trying to hold a conversation over them. I remember a lot of shouting and, at times, strange men asking my name and what I looked liked. It was to some degree an early version of Match.com. Many a wedding arose from a chance meeting on a party line.

And back when "groovy" was cool and not a logo for casual wear companies, the only way to get through a busy signal was to call an operator (yes, a real live person) and declare to her that it was an emergency. She would then interrupt the call and tell the parties to hang up the phone.

Emergencies at the time ranged from the imminent birth of a baby to the rescheduling of the weekly bridge game. Every family in our neighborhood had at one time or another experienced an "emergency". The hard part was concocting a story so urgent that the operator would break into the call but not so terrifying that it would give the person you're trying to contact a heart attack.

With iPads and laptops, watching television and movies has become an individual activity. Post-stone age but pre-iTunes, most families only had one television, color if they were well-off or go go boots were in fashion. There were a handful of stations (and I mean one hand), and back then TV time equaled family time. I gave in and cheered for the Toronto Maple Leafs when they took to the ice against the Montreal Canadiens. I had no choice; my father had final say on what we watched.

After we bought our second TV, I was released from the gulag of professional hockey, football and, most thankfully, Bowling for Dollars. But it's with fond memories that I remember watching TV with my family, laughing together at the antics of Green Acres, The Odd Couple and Mary Tyler Moore. My sister and I took turns as human remote controls, getting up to turn the knob that switched the channels or adjusting the antennae when the picture got snowy.

Technology may have made us more connected but it hasn't made us necessarily closer. So the next time you check your e-mail account, instead of hitting the reply key, why not kick it old school and touch someone with a phone call?

The author is a Canadian freelance writer based in Beijing.

For China Daily

(China Daily 03/16/2011)