A while back, an old friend of mine called to say that his brother's baby had been born. I responded, reflexively, "Oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook!"

I was immediately angry with myself. Some of you will remember that I tried Facebook out several months ago in order to contact an old friend from high school, a pursuit I felt justified a discrete sip of the social networking kool-aid. So when did "getting in touch" become "no need to get in touch?"

Different side of the same coin--I was chatting with a friend from school the other day who vented her frustration about people who sit and "text" others from their phones while visiting face-to-face with her. Now, I know that a lot of fuddy-duddy luddites see teen (and young adult) texting as a serious epidemic for many semi-valid reasons, but this isn't a "get-off-my-lawn" post. "Texting" has some clear intrinsic value; namely, it's one way to communicate with others more often. But when you sacrifice face-to-face interaction for enhanced textual interaction, again, "getting in touch" gets in the way of being in touch.

Notice that I am, necessarily, working from the premise that physical interaction qualitatively trumps telecourse. Some would disagree, particularly those who dread face-to-face interaction (or, more commonly, face-to-face conflict), but I have an as-yet-unexplored hunch that employing technology to facilitate, rather than to overcome, one's fears is ultimately self-destructive. Regardless, I am thoroughly intrigued by the conundrum that tools designed for (and tremendously successful at) facilitating social interaction also serve to undermine socialization by automating the process, excising the "inter-" from "intercourse."

A third offender, appropriately, is blogging. Another friend of mine likes to call her weekly reading "blogspying," because she catches up on the goings-on of all her friends and relatives by checking their blogs, but without actually interacting with any of them. Hopefully the fact that I am writing this tells you something about how I feel toward blogging! I think it is an interesting and potentially valuable pursuit. And while this particular blog is geared more toward commentary than digital scrapbooking, I have mentioned in the past its socializing function--anyone from my past who might have reason to look for me should have no trouble finding me. So blogspying is great, but we can't let it become the only thing we do...

I wrote some time ago about the virtue of blogging and MySpace et al. as fundamentally creative; I still believe that. I'm also a big fan of technology, in case you had any doubt. So I don't feel comfortable blaming these things--cell phones, social networking, blogging--for the damage they do to genuine human interaction.

But the streamlining, the pursuit of hyper-efficiency that characterizes our business dealings and our social dealings alike, anymore, feels misguided. Maybe there's nothing to worry about; maybe we humans are still adjusting to the change, exploring the boundaries and expanding our understanding of what these tools can do, as opposed to what they should do. Just as a chainsaw is capable of cutting a microwave in half, but ought not be used in such a capacity, lest collateral damage result, maybe we need to approach our newfound capacity for auto-socializing (i.e., e.g. blogging on our own, then reading the blogs of others on our own) with greater care. The Information Age has blessed us with some nifty tools that can facilitate socialization magnificently, but will also dismantle our socialization if misused. That includes texting others while engaged in face-to-face conversation, blogspying without an occasional comment (you're doing fine, Chelsea d^_~b), and raining on someone's good-news parade with stupid comments like, "Oh, yeah, I read that on Facebook."

Parting jab: all of the foregoing is one reason I have commenting enabled on almost every single page of this site!