We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy.

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.

Everything that enchants may be said to deceive.

My own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy - about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude - the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude.

We're letting [technology] take us places that we don't want to go.

As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves.

What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.