Tara's got a great post on how our generation is truly living online more and more everyday...
Link: ::HorsePigCow:: life uncommon: My so-called online life.
What I'm saying is that things are going to get interesting as more and more people migrate online. I don't know if it will bring us closer together or further apart.
I do know that we can connect easier with people all over the world - enabling all sorts of opportunities. On the flipside, we are choosing to interact online more often than offline, so what does that do to intimacy?
What I find is that a lot of this online stuff fuels intimacy. Just the other day, a placement agent called me about a deal. He sent me pitch deck and when I replied with a thank you, he clicked on the blog link that I have in my e-mail footer. He called me back ten minutes later to tell me all about how he used to be really into the canoeing and kayaking community back in the 70's in Philly. All of the sudden, he became a multidimensional person to me... not just a phone call and an e-mail Powerpoint deck to be screened and triaged.
Yesterday, I got a pitch from a guy in Latin America who asked about my leg. No better way to get free sympathy than to blog about your various injuries.
When I blog, my friends are able to catch up on my life so that, the next time I actually do see them they know what's going on. We don't waste time "catching up" with monologues, but just actually conversing and sharing real time together. It invites people I'd never know to comment, exchange, and impact my thinking. More people know that I'm dating someone now than anyone I've ever dated, because I blog about her.
That's intimacy, to me. Its different than we've previously known it to be. Call it Intimacy 2.0. :)