All the faces were aglow.

Last night was a perfect evening in Chicago, Friday night, 75 degrees under a starry sky. The shackles of the long cold winter which had constrained the residents of this lakeside beach town had finally been removed. The beer gardens and outside cafes sprung to life overnight.

Mary Ellen and I were immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the evening, when we noticed the persistent glow on the faces of those around us. The number of people at the table did not matter, tables of two or tables of four were equally engaged in this quantum dance. The glow was all around us, much like the background radiation in the universe. Human beings, sentient creatures with the ability to think, discern and understand had made the effort to go out and sit at a table in a restaurant with another human being apparently for the expressed purpose of texting, tweeting or emailing.

The hum around us was the staff milling about, not the dim of conversation that was the bane of diners in some long forgotten pre-texting past. No the tables around us were eerily quite with diners focused entirely at their glowing devices nestled comfortably in their cradled hands. They were communicating to others or perhaps to their tablemates with the channel they are most comfortable with.

The question restaurateurs need to ask themselves is since this trend appears to be increasing, how can the restaurant help to facilitate the increase texting, tweeting and emailing that is occurring?