Amitai Etzioni teaches at The George Washington University and is the author of The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics (New York: The Free Press, 1988).

At the entrance to the library of my university, a sign warns: "Turn off your cell phones or put them on silent ring." Some blessed coffee shops display a cell phone in a red circle with a line through it, indicating that the buzzards are barred. Many performances in U.S. concert halls and theaters regularly start with a warning to turn off pagers. Next, we need laptop-free beaches.

More is at issue than elementary civility -- allowing others to have a quiet or cultural moment or the peace to read on a flight. The advances in communications technology force us all to decide when we are "on" or "off."

Non-stop life in the Information Age

Once upon a time, life had a built-in rhythm to it. Most offices, factories and shops were closed at night and on weekends and holidays. There were times reserved for life away from work and commerce. True, even in those dying days, we could take stuffed briefcases home and clients to the club or golf course. But these were the exceptions to the rule.

With technological advances, our free time diminishes

The Internet has no such rhythm. One can trade stocks, barter, shop and examine office files day and night, seven days a week. It knows no Sabbath, Christmas, Yom Kippur or Ramadan. The most recent "advances"-- hand-held e-mail pagers and calls to airplanes -- just eat into whatever free zones are left.

In the brave new world we all face the dilemma Cherrie Blair presented husband and British Prime Minister Tony Blair with recently: We now must make deliberate decisions about the amount of we leave work behind and reserve for our children, spouses, culture and the spiritual sides of our inner being.

Take, for example, family dinners. They no longer just happen; they have to be scheduled and carefully cued into our busy Palm Pilot.

Europeans -- unlike many Americans -- still have fairly robust holidays and vacations. But as they, too, increasingly enter cyberspace, they should look west, to their American brethren, to see what is coming: the frenetic life of day (and night) traders. They should beware the home PC that is on at all times and flashes when new messages zip in at any time, and the pagers and cell phones that buzz while parents finally have their kids' ears or simply take a stroll in the park.

People no longer can rely on the natural rhythm of time off, dedicated to pursuits other than making it. From now on, increasingly, if one is to balance trade and labor with dedications to other pursuits, one must work at it. One must fashion Internet-free zones.

Making time for family time

Such endeavors run into one difficulty: They require committee meetings. I do not mean this literally, but these are not decisions individuals can readily make alone.

If your boss or partner calls for urgent meetings at 8 p.m. or during weekends -- if not face to face then on a conference circuit or e-mail list -- you might be hard put to miss it. If you hold an important position in pork bellies or silver and the Tokyo market caves, it might be difficult for you to ignore the flashing stock ticker and pulsating market display on your screen. And if your office promised delivery just on time the next morning, or you are involved with an initial public offering, merger or buyback, you may be unable to avoid an all-nighter (again), all too common on Wall Street and in American law offices.

In short, we need to sit down with our families and decide on which days to dine together and shut off all beckoning devices (even the TV), and which holidays and vacations are going to be as sacrosanct as one can make them.

This is, of course, the easy part. How to ensure that the new work and commerce culture continues to thrive but also defines impenetrable zones for other pursuits is a challenge we are just beginning to face. These decisions will greatly affect the future of our families, communities, culture, civility and sanity.