I picked up a cold that seems to be going around. It involves the lovely hacking cough, head ache, sore throat, sneezing and nose blowing that we all vehemently strive to stay away from throughout the winter months. It feels like I’m moving through it faster than some of my friends and co-workers, though – Hallelujah!
I was thinking about it, and if I did need to call in sick to work for a day or two, I’m not sure how restful that would be considering how connected we all are all the time. With the advent of Google Buzz, and the incredible growth of Twitter, more and more people are spending more and more time getting connected in less and less real ways.
The virtual social sphere is booming, but are our personal relationships the sacrifice we’re willing to pay for an extra couple minutes to update our status? To me it really goes back to the old saying – less is more. On Facebook I might have thousands of “friends” that I update with short blurbs and pictures about my life, but before I started using Facebook, there was a small group of maybe a dozen people I knew I could call friends – friends that would bring me soup if I were sick (cough cough) or meet me for coffee to talk FACE TO FACE.
It’s funny that Facebook is even called Facebook if you think about it. You get no face-time with anyone. And Twitter has relegated our feelings to 140 characters. (For some of us, this restriction on our word use was long over-due). Buzz is neatly tucked into Gmail, a place to further distance ourselves from true relationship by maintaining e-relationships void of vocal inflection, sarcasm, or body language.
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