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Two girls are sitting on a popular restaurant in Coral Gables, in Florida. They are togetherbut they don't even look at each other. Let alone talk to each other. They are staring at their cell phones. And texting. Each one immersed in their own virtual world. And here's the paradigm: In spite of the web and our cell phones, we are more isolated than ever.

We don't talk to each other as we used to a few years ago, when we didn't have those little things in our hands.

Yes, the web is great and the cell phones are great. It's just that we have become so obsessed with them that we end up missing the point, and that is exactly the whole idea of being better communicated.

When I used to meet a friend, a while back, I used to talk to him. For hours. Uninterrupted.Now, that is history. I may have somebody smack right in front of me but chances are, I would probably be staring at the little screen in between my fingers.

Why do we do that? Whatever happened to us? We have become slaves to our own creation, pretty much like Frankenstein, although this time it's not a creature, it's a gadget!

Do we need to get rid off our phones? Not at all. What we need to do is to give the cell its place and get back to talking more, face to face, eye to eye.

Yes, communication was slow before the internet. Letters took days and weeks to reach its destinations. And then, we needed to wait more days for a response.

In my hometown in Argentina, if I wanted to make an long distance call, I needed to let the phone company know that I was going to place the call and they would tell me the waiting time, sometimes hours and hours.

Today, all of that is history. But at a high price. Let's us retake what is ours, and that is the pleasure of talking to a human being, right across from us. Face to face.