How Does Connection Change The Equation?

How will our society change if you never have to let go of old friends? Will there be sufficient room for new friends?

It is no longer possible to be disconnected.

OK–too strong.

The only way to be disconnected today is by choosing to be disconnected. That’s a huge change begun about twenty years ago, but only now picking up a head of steam. My cellphone (maybe yours too) is a multifaceted, facile, comms device.

My sister called me from the car this afternoon. The her daughter’s ultrasound has been seen. It’s going to be a boy when my niece Jessie gives birth. I knew about it a few minutes after she did in Milwaukee.

My friend Wendie is raving about her trip to South Africa, from South Africa.

it’s nighttime in cape town, which is an amazingly beautiful city…

okay, we don’t have a whole lot to go on, because we’ve only been

here 3 hours, but the grilled prawns are FANTASTIC.. so that’s good

enough for us.

She commented on the photos of Roxie at the dog park. Communications are two-way.

My daughter is in constant contact with her friends from college, though she’s graduated and now working&#185. Her contact is instantaneous and multiplatform: Facebook, text messages and BlackBerry Messenger.

She doesn’t think about cost (nor did my sister or Wendie half way around the world) because the cost of communicating is minimal and trending lower!

I have friends from high school and college I haven’t spoken to in 40 years (maybe they’re no longer really friends). How would my life have been different had I the opportunity to chat-it-up with them through the years?

Long distance phone calls were once expensive. Mail was slow. No longer.

How will our society change if you never have to let go of old friends? Will there be sufficient room for new friends? Are childhood friends really meant to be lifetime friends?

I’m not sure this is a good thing-though it might be. It’s all so foreign and yet it’s such a major game changer.

Actually, that’s my point. It’s a huge game changer though we have no idea what the implications will be except to say it will make a very big difference. How can it not?

&#185 – Stef is working as a production assistant on “Deal or No Deal,” which is taping its 2009 daytime season at Sonlyst Studios in Waterford. Helaine and I are very proud. Stef is very tired.

Alas, over time work only gets more tiring! She’ll see.