#4 / Facebook Friends

Many of my "non Facebook" friends are pretty skeptical about the Facebook Friend concept. And "skeptical" may be a nice way of putting it. If you click on the image, you can get an article that quotes an anthropologist to the effect that when you've hit 150 "friends" you've reached the actual limit of our human ability to relate to others.

I definitely agree that "real" friends must appear, somehow, in one's "real" life, and that a "virtual" or "online" existence is no substitute for actual human contact.

However, my real life experience with my Facebook Friends (1478 as I write this) convinces me that what some see as "illusory" connections are, in fact, "real" connections. Not only do I now have an ever-refreshing focus group to let me know what "people" think (in general, and specifically about my own ideas), I am learning more about people with whom I have actual (though mostly infrequent) contact, and this seems, to me, to help bind me closer to the "real" world. In fact, my Facebook Friendships give me "real" proof, each day, that we are (as I like to say) "all in this together."

We are not just a bunch of unconnected individuals. Emerging from the interaction of our unique individualities is a "real" world - a world that is our common project.