Yesterday I shared my thoughts about the shift from work-life balance to work-life integration. My definition (but certainly not the process) is simple: Work-life balance presumes a clear boundary between work and the rest of your life while integration assumes you’ll be doing both all the time.

Some of the comments that resulted from the post challenged the idea of work-life integration, which led me to conclude that I didn’t explain its roots.

I had an engaging exchange on Twitter with Jim Ryan, a staff writer for the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal, who objected to what he saw as my insistence that people in the workforce adopt the various technologies that have found their way into the world of work. “If you want to plug your head into a machine 24/7, be my guest,” he tweeted. “But don’t insist that be the norm for all others.”

I’m certainly not insisting anything. Rather, I am observing that this has become the norm. The completely unscientific poll I introduced in the earlier post is running 70-30—70% of respondents check work-related email first thing upon getting up in the morning, before anything else.

This trend is not about technology any more than the habit of gathering around a radio, and then a TV set, was about technology. Technology enables cultural change, but the family huddling around the TV was the result of the popularization of a new entertainment form.

The network technologies that allow us to stay connected and communicate with anyone from anywhere are fusing with our culture just as radio and TV did. While those of us working in this space may focus on, obsess over and debate the technologies, the average person out there couldn’t care less.

My 20-year-old daughter—and her entire social circle—serves as an example. Her mobile phone is always with her. It’s always buzzing or launching into any among dozens of ringtones. She doesn’t care all that much about the manufacturer of the phone, the operating system, or the next great thing on the product horizon. She’s barely aware of Android.

In fact, Rachel is baffled by my obsession with emerging technologies. But if I told her she had to go on vacation without her phone, she’d look at me like I had just landed here from somewhere in the Adromeda system. For Rachel, it’s not a question of whether she’s plugged into a machine 24/7. It’s a question of being in or out of touch with her network of friends and colleagues. In her paradigm, 24/7 connectivity is just the way things are. And the connectivity is with people, not with platforms, algorithms or systems configurations.

Work connections are just part of the mix. Work and social contacts get mooshed together. Sprint and Palm recognized this phenomenon and incorporated it into the design of the Palm Pre. When I got my Pre, I identified my various email accounts and calendars, and the Pre aggregates them into a single view. Is it work or personal? Color codes differentiate it, but all activities are combined into a single calendar and emails into a single email stream. The Pre recognizes the shift from a clear boundary between work and life into a world where it’s all the same.

Compounding the phenomenon is the fact that it has permeated all demographics, not just Rachel’s segment and younger. Certainly there are fewer people embracing the integration as the demographic line trends older, but there are people in every group for whom the difference between work connections and others have blurred beyond distinction.

You’ll rarely, if ever, hear anyone of Rachel’s generation suggest you should “unplug.” Being plugged-in is a tactical, mechanical concept that has nothing to do with the conversation and information mediated by devices. To suggest to Rachel that she unplug is like telling suggesting she enclose herself in an isolation tank. The technology is just the means to the end of connection with real people. That’s all that matters. It’s not about being plugged in; it’s about being in touch, with everyone, all the time.