Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

We're too busy communicating to think, too busy communicating to connect, and sometimes we're too busy communicating to create. This is true for individuals and also true for organizations.

We are not as strong as technology's pull.

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

Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.

Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.

Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I'd like to learn how to have a conversation.