A lot of people say about the effects of technology and communication. Do you agree or disagree?

Email, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn, blogs (of course), and scores of others—all part of the new and wonderful ways we can now connect with one another electronically, each with its own culture and unique set of rules. In one sense, the planet has never been more interconnected. And yet, this interconnectedness, while wonderful, hasn't come without cost.For transferring information efficiently, the Internet is excellent. For transacting emotionally sensitive or satisfying connections, it's not. My wife and I joke that we use email messaging when we're sitting back-to-back in our home office, but we use it to keep a record of our schedule. When we have a conflict, we turn our chairs around and talk.

Even when we're all careful to use the Internet only to exchange information, problems can still arise. People tend to delay answering emails when they don't have what they consider to be good answers or when they want to avoid whatever responsibility the email demands of them. But this is like being asked a question in person and rather than responding, "I don't know" or "I'll have to think about it," turning on your heels and walking away in silence. It's far easier to ignore an email sender's request than a request from someone made in person because an email sender's hope to get a response or frustration in not receiving one remains mostly invisible. But it's every bit as rude.

Our "emotional invisibility" on the Internet perhaps also explains so much of the vitriol we see on so many websites. People clearly have a penchant for saying things in the electronic world they'd never say to people in person because the person to whom they're saying it isn't physically present to display their emotional reaction. It's as if the part of our nervous system that registers the feelings of others has been paralyzed or removed when we're communicating electronically, as if we're drunk and don't realize or don't care that our words are hurting others.

The Internet is an amazing tool. But even as it's shrunk the world and brought us closer together, it's threatened to push us further apart. Like any useful tool, to make technology serve us well requires the exercise of good judgment. For whatever reason, the restraints that stop most of us from blurting out things in public we know we shouldn't seem far weaker when our mode of communication is typing. Unfortunately, typed messages often wound even more gravely, while electronic messages of remorse paradoxically have little power to heal. Perhaps we just don't think such messages have the same power to harm as when we we say them in person. Perhaps in the heat of the moment without another's physical presence to hold us back, we just don't care. Whatever the reason, it's clearly far easier for us to be meaner to one another online. Let's try not to be.

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