My own feeling is a friend is someone whom you know, like, trust, allied and acquaintance. Most of us have many friends. My question is out of all of our friends how many of them are true friends? How do we distinguish the two: a regular friend vs. a true friend?

A true friend is someone who knew you when you were down and out, and treat you the same when you are doing well.

Thank You,
Giovanna Garcia

Well, it works for us old folk too! I’ve know some amazing women in my life but lost touch with many of them back in pre-Internet days. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to find most of them and the ones I didn’t find found me. Today, I regularly trade emails with the girl who first took my breath away in 1967, as well as the one who first made me consider marriage in the mid-70’s… etc… Today, we have friendships that could never have been imagined in the old days. In the old days, you really had to “love ‘em and leave ‘em”. That’s no longer the case.

It’s not just about the young kids. We all benefit from this marvelous Internet thing.

bob wyman

I like Rob Long’s points and share the desire for a fullness that does some part of the past. Do you think we’ll really be more like Austen’s books though, spending more time together because of the net? Let’s hope.

I can’t – it would just be impossible – to interact with them all, all of the time. But I’m content to know my best mate from School is with his new wife in India on honeymoon or who has a hangover and who jogs around Chicago and who has just had an Elephant accident.

It’s great, it is like a never ending set of postcards…

I really appreciate the thoughts, and agree with much of what you are saying. I should probably read your book as well.

I am very typical Generation Google, with oodles of digital friends and connections dating back to preschool on Facebook. However, I’m going to be a grump about it and point out the downside. As much as I want to believe that the natural ebb and flow of friendships will somehow evolve to make digital friendships manageable, I am not seeing it yet. I love my friends from all over the globe, but the truth is I can’t keep up with all of them!

Let me clarify: I am not saying I don’t like digital connections — I am an online journalist, so this is imperative — I mean that the digital universe keeps me in touch with “real life” friends probably more than it should. For instance, I wonder if I’m really supposed to know that some girl I sat next to in English in 2001 is pregnant.

For one example: Try moving to New York City as a member of Generation Google. The minute your Facebook location switches, there’s about 100 requests from “good friends” all over the globe saying, “Hey, haven’t talked to you in a while, but I had so much fun the time we visited Spain! Maybe I could come visit you?”

I know I sound like a jerk for complaining about having too many friends, and I’m working on limiting how many people I really have intimate connections with. (And in case you are wondering, I just say no to a lot of the people that want to crash on my couch.) And to be fair, I’m sure no matter what time period I’d live in, I’m the kind of person that has the problem of spreading myself too thin, so it’s a personal problem to work on.

I just wanted to point out the flip side of things, which is that over-connectedness is going to be a challenge for my generation.

- Ellie Behling

It’s a pretty recent development — maybe only since that past 100 years or so — that people weren’t followed around by their reputations.

And it’s an even more recent development that people, at night, turn into a giant sofa-sitting audience. Most people, for most of human history, spent their nights hanging out: chatting, reading or sending letters, playing games, making music, gossiping, that sort of thing. Oh, sure, occasionally they’d all sit by the fire and hear a storyteller (and, later, go to the theater or symphony or something) but mostly they visited with each other. They had complicated and elastic friendships. They had circles and circles of people in their lives. Like in those Jane Austen books.

People in my business (Hollywood) delude ourselves into thinking that it’s somehow natural for everyone to collapse onto the sofa and stare at a screen. But when you think about it, what people doing for all of those years of chatting, reading and sending letters, playing games, making music, and gossiping is what they’re doing now, with IMs and emails and Second Life and Worlds of Warcraft and Guitar Hero and Facebook.

So maybe we’re not changing. Maybe we’re changing back.

Jeff, I can’t wait to read your book. Let me know when the book tour starts and you’re heading out to LA, because I often do author interviews for the local public radio station there, KCRW – I do a weekly commentary for them — and I’ll do my best to get you an interview on their half-hour show “Politics of Culture.”

To me, though, the interesting part is that the real-world aspect has helped to temper the online part so that it doesn’t (nearly as often) turn into flaming and nastiness and online vandalism; people who would be assholes given total anonymity keep it cooler because of the possibility they’ll someday meet you in person.

Your points are very well taken. I wonder what the effect is going to be on Generation Baby Boom. (that includes me.) Remember we’re still around in very big numbers. We have the time, experience and hopefully the resources to help this next generation. Most of us have done whatever we are going to do. It’s time to enjoy our lives and give back for all the luck we’ve had.

Is it possible that the huge “wealth transfer” that the pundits discussed, is going to turn out to be in the form of advice, mentoring and focus on making a better world for our grandchildren