It all stems from the same thing - which is that when we are face to face - and this is what I think is so ironic about Facebook being called Facebook, because we are not face to face on Facebook ... when we are face to face, we are inhibited by the presence of the other. We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

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.

What is the value of interactions that contain no understanding of us and that contribute nothing to a shared store of human meaning?

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.

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

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