How Lonely Is the Life That Is Lived Online?

There are a handful of truly great tech writers in America today. They are primarily the ones whose writing transcends talking about cool technology, and rather seek to write about how technology intersects with society, culture and business.

My favorites include Dan Gillmor and John Markoff. Dan has become a wonderful friend, and I read his stuff all the time, and use his ideas when I speak to my friends, to other users and to user groups.

I have not met John Markoff but hope to someday. In today’s N.Y. Times he has a great piece related to “How Lonely Is the Life That Is Lived Online?”.

 In it he quotes at length from a study by Norman H. Nie, a professor at Stanford. Markoff writes that “ He (Nie) is openly skeptical of the argument made by the Internet's defenders that the medium increases the number of social contacts of its users. ‘The question is not the number of friends you have, it's the time you spend with them,’ “  

I would submit that my life is richer by far from the social and intellectual contacts that I have made in the ActiveWords odyssey and from the incredibly stimulating ideas that I encounter from the blogs of others.

Perhaps it is a personality defect on my part, but I have concluded that if my friends were as bright, literate and talented as some of the people I encounter during this odyssey then I probably would spend more time with them, but tragically they are not, and arguably many are frozen in time thinking about their “Glory Days”  .

Perhaps in a perfect world all your friends would be in one place, and at the same time, but that isn't going to happen, hence blog on!

12:05:49 PM