social horizons. Twenty years ago I rarely spoke by phone to more
than five people in a day. Now I often send e-mail to dozens of
people a day. I have so many friends! Um, can you remind me of their
names? Of course, it works both ways. My many e-mail 'friends' also
have many 'friends,' and I'm just one of them. So they can't afford
to treat me like a friend - reliably acknowledging my existence, that
sort of thing. So questions arise. Is Joe - who once answered e-mail
promptly but has fallen silent - mad at me? Or has my social status,
in Joe's view, dropped a bit, so I'm not quite worth his time? And if
the latter: Who the hell does Joe think he is? [...] With the time
you don't spend worrying about Joe, you can crank out e-mail to Jim,
Sally and Sue. And efficiency is what e-mail is about, right? By
ending the need to coordinate schedules, it lets us interact with
lots of people - and interact along such narrow channels that we skip
the bother of getting to know an entire human being. It's an old
story. Technological change makes society more efficient and less
personal. We know more people more shallowly."
Robert Wright, International Herald Tribune, April 17, 2007
www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/17/opinion/edwright.php
