The Heart of the WELL

This article made me question the effect of online relationships. The relationships he forms are clearly beneficial in some ways- he genuinely cares about the plight of a Himalayan nun, and he gets medical advice to help his daughter faster than he ever could through traditional means- and it would seem that he really comes to appreciate the WELL as a separate community. But does this mean that his other relationships were hurt in the process? When he finds help from the doctor in the WELL, did that set up a pattern where most medical interaction occurs online? When he’s looking for advice on whether or not to let his daughter get a piercing, would he go first to his friends or to strangers on the Internet? Or are they even different? When my cousins first had kids, they wouldn’t talk about anything but every small detail of child rearing. They were heart breakingly boring. Eventually, however, they found some new topics because we were all disinterested in talking to them and the human drive for interaction mandated they find a new way to relate. This forum is all about childrearing, a topic that many parents are too comfortable having as their only subject of conversation. Online, people, or rather, geeks, can find other people who are willing to talk about the thing they want to talk about the most. I wonder if this will make us less willing to seek out live-flesh friendships with people among whom the conversation is less assured.