AP Photo

My friend Morgan Rank owned an art gallery in East Hampton several years ago. He moved to Italy, living in the quiet countryside there for nearly a decade. We had lost touch and then, at an art event in New York, someone approached me and said, "Morgan is back." I got a phone number and called him.

Morgan really lived off the grid. No internet. Little telephone usage. When we spoke awhile back, he commented on the digital age he found, in full force, upon his return. "Theses kids with these devices in their hands every minute of the day," he said. "They will never get to know each other the way we did. They will never stare at each other over a candle, jammed into a bottle of Mateus, on a red checkered table cloth in some restaurant."