Internet People

By sheer coincidence, I was asked by American Public Media's Jon Gordon to say a few words about making people friends on the internet for the radio segment Future Tense. About one sentence of mine was used in the beginning of the segment as anecdotal evidence that social media does not isolate people but, in fact, it gives people richer, wider social circles.

And there's no doubt it's true. I've had in-person, meaningful interactions (which is to say they've had something interesting, new, funny, etc to say) with fully 45 people I met through Twitter. That's almost half the people I follow on Twitter who I also know in real life. But more importantly, that's 45 new people in my community I would have very likely not met otherwise. And yes, this includes Emily, who I will have been dating for a year in January.

I was trying to dig for some deeper meaning to this, but I think this is actually pretty profound on its own. This is a the 21st century story.