We can't turn it off -- we just can't. Our relationship with our phones (BlackBerrys, iPhones, Sidekicks) have gotten so eerily co-dependent that, as the New York Times noted in a must-read story, we're solving "a problem caused by technology with more technology." Instead of simply turning the phone off, some of us go to a free site like ZoomSafer to disable our beloved cell phones. And, as if texting or talking on our phones aren't enough, some of us want to type in our cars, too -- hence the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk. Thankfully, the product's seller warns: "For safety reasons, never use this product while driving." No kidding.

Because here's the biggest challenge of our hyper-kinetic, always-connected, tech-powered daily lives: Unplugging. A few weeks ago, we asked some of the biggest names in the tech and online world how they slow down. Recently, for a video for CNN.com, I spent an hour or so at Times Square in New York City -- the capital of TWW (texting while walking) -- asking people when they turn off their cell phones. "A text message is more important than my health," a 16-year-old told me. "Radiation, like, it's not gonna do that much."

Well, we've got a long way to go.

Is there anyone quite like Sarah Palin online?

At the moment, no -- not Michael Jackson, not Manny Pacquiao, not even President Obama. According to Google Insights for Search, which tracks what the online masses are searching for within specific times and regions, the former Alaska governor-turned vice presidential nominee-turned media celebrity far surpasses Obama when it comes to Google searches. Online, interest in all things Palin has surged in the past few days. Of course, the more TV appearances she makes promoting her book "Going Rogue" -- first with Oprah Winfrey, then with FOX's Sean Hannity and a multi-part series with ABC News -- the bigger draw she becomes online, in blogs (right and left), on YouTube (1,320 Palin-oriented videos have been uploaded since last Thursday) and other social networking sites. Online popularity can be defined in various ways. Sheer ubiquity is one.

"Searches for Sarah Palin have surged to their highest level since the election -- even further than when she resigned as Governor of Alaska," Google spokesman Galen Panger told HuffPostTech. "While search interest now still pales in comparison with when she was announced as John McCain's pick for VP, at the moment she's all the rage--and right now people are searching for her more than President Obama."

In front of an ecstatic, sold-out crowd at MGM Grand Sunday night, Pacquiao won his seventh title in seven weight divisions -- a first in boxing history.

And within seconds, a once dirt-poor man from the Philippines who sold cigarettes on the road had the Web buzzing.

By 3 a.m. EST Sunday, 5 out of the hottest 10 terms on Google Trends were Pacquiao-related: "paquiao vs cotto results"; "floyd mayweather"; "manny pacquiao"; "manny pacquiao vs miguel cotto video"; and "cotto vs pacquiao free live stream."

Manny Pacquiao is the Philippines.

And on the social Web -- where the often overlooked Filipino diaspora gather on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube -- today is Manny Pacquiao Day, when the 5-foot-6-inch boxer faces Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto for a welterweight title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Win or lose (and, for my money, he'll win), the 30-year-old Pacquiao has already secured his spot in boxing history. To his fans, he's "Pac-Man", "the fighting pride of the Philippines," "the best pound-for-pound professional boxer," "The Mexicutioner" -- referring to his wins over Mexican boxers Marco Antonio Barrera, Juan Manuel Marquez and Oscar De La Hoya.

No other boxer comes close, right now, to matching his popularity online.

*UPDATED*

Change, of course, carries many definitions, as Barack Obama won the White House a year ago this week, expanding the American electorate by drawing new voters, raising millions from small-dollar donations and, for the first time in presidential politics, placing modern technology (the Internet, text messaging, social networking) smack in the middle of the campaign. Change, in this context, meant putting everyday people -- the voters -- at the heart of the operation. Change, in other words, meant us. We changed -- the way people participated in politics changed.

And that resulted, when we look back, in staggering numbers:

* Some 3 million individual donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. The average donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.

"Technology, like the grassroots focus, would be at the core of our campaign from the start..."
-- David Plouffe, "The Audacity to Win"

Is it time for Plouffe, the architect behind Obama's winning campaign, to take Organizing for America out of the Democratic National Committee?

Organizing for America, aka OFA, was once Obama for America, the most technology-savvy political operation in American history. It's home to by far the biggest e-mail list in Washington -- some 13 million e-mail addresses of supporters who not just financially supported Obama's candidacy but also collectively clocked hundreds of hours in volunteer time to help elect him president: knocking on doors, making phone calls, spreading the word around within their own online social networks. In other words, supporters didn't just give money. They gave money and worked for Obama for free.

Online, Michael Jackson is a singular attraction.

We saw this on June 25, a day that will forever live in online infamy, when the King of Pop's death literally stopped the Internet. Within a day, Jackson's main Wikipedia article was viewed more than 6 million times. Twitter and AOL Instant messaging went berserk. Text messages flooded phones. (I, for one, didn't learn about Jackson's death from TMZ or CNN; a cousin had texted me with "Michael Jackson is dead.")

Which is not at all surprising given Jackson's draw on social networking sites, and the kind of connected world we're living in. Events don't just happen. Events are shared. On Facebook, for example, the biggest Jackson page has 10.3 million fans. To put that figure into context, consider that the official Barack Obama page has 6.8 million fans and the official Sarah Palin page has more about 951,000. On YouTube, type "Michael Jackson" and about 950,000 videos pop up -- easily more videos than when you type some of biggest names in music: "U2" (131,000) "Beyonce" (275,000), "Taylor Swift" (249,000), "Lil' Wayne" (472,000), to name just a few. About 3,000 Jackson-oriented videos have been uploaded in the past 24 hours -- and, yes, some of them are videos of fans reviewing "This Is It," the new documentary featuring the last performing hours of The Gloved One, singing, dancing and rehearsing a planned concert series.

They were ubiquitous, they were tech-savvy, they were vocal -- nearly a year after the election, where are the young Obama supporters?

Where are the voters under 30 who preferred Obama over McCain by a staggering 66-32 percent margin, the biggest of any age group? Where is the mainstream media -- the same MSM that declared 2008 as "The Year of the Youth Vote" -- in covering how young people are impacted by the health care debate, which has dominated the news for months? (Studies show that a quarter of Americans ages 25 to 34 don't have health insurance, while about a third of Americans ages 21 to 24 live without it -- more than any other age group. This is partly because young people think they're invincible -- "Me? Get sick? No way!" -- but it's also partly because they're either out of work or their employers don't offer insurance.) Where is the Team Obama that adeptly leveraged the enthusiasm of its digitally-plugged young troops, who scheduled rallies on Facebook, passed YouTube videos around their network and sent text messages reminding their friends to vote? Speaking last month at George Washington University, just a few blocks from the White House, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe told the college crowd: "Your generation won the election ... Obama simply wouldn't have been the nominee without you."

Tobin Van Ostern, a recent George Washington graduate, e-mailed me Plouffe's comment last week.

Of course technology is non-partisan, belonging to neither the Democratic Party nor the GOP.

*Watch video of Michael Steele's speech at the RNC's tech summit last February*

You are how you communicate.

If you like having an instant focus group, a pulsating, by-the-second, rat-a-tat-tat burst of soundbites, wisecracks and tidbits, then Twitter is probably the best platform for you. (Text messaging, by extension, is a private one-on-one tweet. Or, in tweet-speak, a "DM," aka Direct Message.)

If you want a more closed-off, only-in-the-company-of-friends stream of information, then Facebook may be your best bet. (Not everyone on Facebook, for example, can see my photos.)

Sometimes, we just need to unplug.

No firing off text messages. No updating Facebook profiles. No browsing Craigslist or Yelp or whatever-hot-new-site is trending on Twitter. No compulsively -- okay, obsessively -- thumbing through iPhones, BlackBerries and Androids. Yes, technology is all around us -- in our pockets, on our beds, constant, clickable companions. And, yes, it's all moving at such warp speed (have you heard? foursquare is the new Twitter!) that we can't help but try and keep up.

Still, there's a reason why most everything technological has an off button. So in honor of "In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed," Arianna's inaugural book club pick, we asked some of the world's most notable techies to tell HuffPostTech how they slow down. That is, when they do slow down.

"The future of news."

Such an incredibly loaded phrase, soaked with history, imprisoned by its own myths and misconceptions, usually the subject of much doom-saying, finger-wagging, "look-at-what-the-Internet-and-technology-has-done!" tone. Search for yourself. Type "the future of news" on Google and drink the misery. Talking about the future of news too often translates to talking about the past.

That's exactly how I felt when a friend, a fellow 20-something journalist, tweeted the news release of a 10-part public television series called "The Future of News," produced by the Newseum in Washington, D.C. and scheduled to air next year. "You've got to be kidding," the friend wrote in a subsequent instant message. "This is the future of news?"

All the Internet does is reflect -- and amplify -- human behavior.

It's easy to be anonymous online, as anyone who's ever been a victim of online slander knows. It's also easy to threaten the life of the sitting American president. And the controversial Facebook poll asking users if President Obama should be killed underlines two emerging ethos of the connected, free-wheeling, open-like-an-open-wound Web.

Here's a memory: mid-October last year, weeks before Election Day. Blach Middle School, in leafy Los Altos, just a few miles from the headquarters of Apple, Google and Facebook in Silicon Valley. A new kind of tech-powered politics was cemented in my head.

Nearing the end of covering the historic 2008 presidential campaign for the Washington Post, a friend invited me to come speak to the school's 4th-period journalism class. Some 20 kids showed up. In a roomful of wide-eyed, curious, 7th and 8th graders -- most of whom had been reading about the never-ending campaign online -- young Naib Mian easily stood out. Seated in the back of the school library, the 13-year-old son of Pakistani immigrants raised his left hand and blurted out: "Have you downloaded Obama's new iPhone app?"

I had a BlackBerry.