Have I seen you lately?!

Its become apparent to me over the last few months the distance many of us have with each other. I also realised that many of our phones ring less & mobiles bleep more. The use of texting ,email, facebook , facebook email, twitter et al are wonderful and exciting mediums in the new wave of communication. I for one love interacting with others this way . I feel every day , especially on twitter, I take up new ways of thinking and have fun making new connections with others in a similar field and many who are not, BUT I feel we mustn't forget the need to connect with people on a real face to face level, voice to voice.

In the ever increasing need to be globally aware and think of our environment , our school has now gone electronic , we are no longer get given anything on paper , but via email. The pros are yes very paramount ; no waste , you cant lose an email as such , so there's no way you can say you haven't read it and you don't have loads of paper everywhere! The cons ; A feeling that there is a divide or separation. A feeling that may be you shouldn't speak to people in person , that they may be too busy or unavailable. I think this is happening on a social level also.

Many of us feel lost , alone and quite separate and I feel its only exaggerated by the very impersonal use of communication devices. Don't get me wrong I use all of the methods of communication mentioned and I think its a wonderful thing we have going, but how do we get back to feeling we can just simply talk, (like being round a campfire), or even just knock on a friends door and say lets have a cuppa? Or shockingly have a whole conversation that doesn't consist of text tennis and 20 of them by the time your finished!

Is it because of these methods that we have less time for real contact , or does it pave the way to have more? Have we actually saturated ourselves with communication and contact with others? How do you transition from having an online relationship to a real time live one?

I think the best remedy is to make sure that every week , real contact is made, instead of a text, facebook or twitter update, phone someone. Where possible, time permitting , location permitting ,(yes I know we cant all pop on planes and see others overseas), meet up , chat round a hot drink, have some face to face time.

Ive probably missed a whole gamut of new fandango communication devices in the video conferencing market or some such,(when businessing at home you really do have to keep more of an eye on the progression of things but Ive liked to keep my life simpler of late!) , although it has been some time since I used my web cam on MSN, may its time to warm it up again, or is that passe now!? For that matter , I haven't even tapped the possibilities of my Skype account either, so who needs to pay phone bills anymore!

What do you do to make sure your connected to people rather than just with words on a screen? Is your web cam always on? Or sometimes do we actually like being able to hide behind these screens, do we like not having to make physical or more human contact? Is the world so fast paced now , that its quite nice to choose when and how we speak? Do you have less phone calls or do you still like to philosophise together into the night?

On that note , wheres my phone!?!