Hi Julie,

I just wanted to make a brief comment, but it's somewhat off-topic. I didn't know where to post this so I'm choosing to drop it here since it's the most current.

I don't read your blog as regularly as I'd like, but when I do, I usually spend several hours reading the posts for several weeks and most of the comments. IMHO, you are an excellent writer. I like the content you provide and the stimulus it generates for discussion. CIP – lately I have been researching the topic of 'whiteness' within the current national conversation on race. I was glad and sad at the same time while reading your review of Dr. Rah's book. There is a very real anti-white sentiment that permeates the anti-racism movement and I was very disturbed to hear such ideas expressed in Dr. Rah's book. While we need to embrace an honest critique of white Western culture, we also need to distinguish between white culture and white people.

Thanks for your thoughts and comments.

Blessings,

Shlomo

The tool has changed. We have less ink under our nails. But the need for kindred spirits with like minded goals and dreams is timeless.

It's when those type of interactions begin to replace in-person friendships and interaction or crowd out the ability to form new friendships with people in my immediate community that I could otherwise be forming, that something is lost. That doesn't have to happen, but we're fooling ourselves if we deny that happens for some people, or deny that the technology can lend itself to that. On the relational level, for most people, facebook, twitter and the like remind me of the cheap, but not very nutritious food that crowds the shelves of your local grocery store. Relatively harmless and even good in moderation; but not a healthy primary diet.

If forced to choose, I'll take Wendell Berry's vision of community over Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs'. But as long as technology remains a servant rather than a master, maybe I shouldn't have to choose.

And besides, who says all of your relationships need to be exceptionally deep anyway? I value the handful of deeper friendships I have, but if every friendship I had was like that it would wear me out! I think Joe Myers makes a great point in his book "The Search to Belong", that each of us has multiple spheres of interaction, and as the spheres get larger, the level of intimacy grows less, and that this is a normal and healthy thing! So so what if the interactions on Facebook are "shallow"? As long as I have other more intimate relationships elsewhere, why should I want or expect anything more from Fb?