more email talk, how grand. back in the day when people only had letters and phone calls, it was very possible to lose touch with your friends for extended periods of time. has email made friendships too accessible? it helps to be able to contact friends at your leisure but in a way, it causes you to not really miss them. my father and uncle andy weren't able to keep in touch for maybe ten years and during that time they established careers, families and grown up personalities. what must it be like to lose track of your good friend, only to reunite with them down the road, with enough distance for both of you to have changed? now we witness every change in our close friends. when they get the new girlfriend, what movie they saw, what books they read, what frustrations they have on the job, how hard it was for them to poop today. is it too much? is there something to be said for having some distance in a friendship?



on the other hand, email has been an excellent way for me to get to know people i would otherwise have no business knowing. people i've met once in reality life but have had very fulfilling email relationships with. (bonus question: are these one night email friendships more email fulfilling than normal email friends because that's the only way i have a connection with them? so that the only thing that makes us friends is email and so thus, the medium is elevated?) if i had met these people fifty years ago, we would probably just have hung out for some period of time and separated forever. through the power of email, we are able to talk to each other while at the same time not having to go the whole letter route. email: it's simple, it's efficient, it's convenient, it's easy. it's the whore of communication.