Being able to focus on the other person rather than the text you just received has become the new fundamental requirement for having a relationship with that person. If you go to a restaurant these days, for instance, you see people sitting together, at the same table, staring at their video screens, their phone, their iPad, or whatever it may be — and not talking to each other. That’s become the new norm. And what it means is that the connection is being damaged to some extent — threatened by the fact that we’re together, but we’re not together. We’re alone together.
Daniel Goldman, Is Attention the Secret to Emotional Intelligence
Mindfulbalance 
The attention, is the outward expression of the soul.
Interesting post and relevant topic. I have also noticed an interesting analogue- when my wife is away and I am alone in the house, even if we just had a busy week of occupying the same space but were consumed largely by our work and projects and spoke infrequently, there is something missing… There is something primal about sharing space with someone, even if the mind is distracted. And you notice it later, in their absence… Sharing space is almost it’s own type of intimacy. It could also be like spending time with a stranger and hardly talking- with or without those pesky devices- on a ramshackle bus crossing a desert. You brush up against one another at each pothole, but hardly share two words. After twenty hours of sharing a common topographical experience, even in the absence of words, some type of intimacy has formed. I grant you it’s not quite what we would call a “relationship”, but these things are not “nothing” either, are they?
Michael
Alas. Sad but true.