There is room for professional journalists and bloggers to share space online but the either/or argument doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Good journalism and good writing online should be the gold standard.

So many people feel that they must construct and portray a image of who they are, that personal things can only be used against them. While I do hope that kids learn to behave responsibly and safely online, I hope that adults learn to open up more, for all the reasons you state.
Have a nice evening.

Jeff,

I would think again… We all have limited time. I doubt those who claim to have more than a handful of (actual) friends. Makes me think they are counting acquaintances as friends — they don’t know the difference.

This is the trap (well… on of them…) Facebook and other “social networks” seem to exploit: “come over here! you’ll keep more friendships than you ever imagined! — just send an itty-bitty note to everybody you know every now and then”… right:)… that’s just going to cause you to lose your actual friends while chasing some meaningless number…

Just imagine *all* those people from your past would have responded and would have been ready to spend the amount of time needed for an actual friendship for indefinite time –> COULD you have done it? (I’m not asking *would* you have done it — I’m assuming you would have *liked* to do it… you just couldn’t have possibly fit all of them in for the long run…)

Delia

Just one comment: I find the magnitude and pervasiveness of the web such that, with only one or two remaining exceptions, I can pretty much find anyone.

And many of these people I find left no intentional footprint, fiingerprint, or anyprint. Over the last few years I have made a sort of sport/hobby out of finding pretty much anyone and everyone with whom I have had any significant relationship since I was born in 1951. People leave “secondary” and “tertiary” webprints that they don’t know about and are just there for the picking.

Some mornings i wake up and remember some kid in the third grade or some horrible teacher and usually I can find them. In fact, out of a slew of wonderful teachers, I had an abusive and cruel 8th grade sadist who took his short stature and inferiority complex out on kids. Of course I was able to find him. Now the question is whether I send an old man a letter and tell him what a thrill it is to finally find my old teacher and tell him what an unrepentant prick he was.

I have acctually thought about doing a book on what I call, for lack of a better term, personal achaeology or excavating your past.

So many discoveries and surprizes. People who awed and intimidated you ended up yutzes. An arrogant and despicable guy who got into medical school and became a physician ended up a convicted sex offender. Quiet, decent nerds became combat fighter pilots. And old girlfriends you thought would be thrilled to hear from you took the opportunity to remind you yet again — thirty years later — why they dumped you.

For the most part, this new publicness has been nothing short of thrilling. And often incredibly revealing of life’s real and unscripted trajectories.

Also, while you’re right that the Web allows one to search for old pals, it also leads to information about some of those old pals that’s just clutter. I’m on Facebook and I see updates on ‘Friends’ that I could do well without. It’s one reason I’m considering cancelling my Facebook account.