Loss of the Random Link
Anil Dash writes about the "Obsolescence of Happenstance" recently in his blog. Anil points out that our new-fangled communications tools have shifted our points of contact away from the abstract (company, family) to the concrete (employee, individual) and efficiently wiped out a great deal of the random encounters that were found in not-so-recent times. As he notes:
Once, there was fairly frequent interaction with people who weren't your intended target of conversation. Speaking to a receptionist before getting to a business contact comes to mind, and its certainly an example that's not going away any time soon, but the more casual conversations are the ones that intrigue me. Your friend's younger sister who always ran to answer the phone first, the roommate of a person whom you spoke to frequently, your parents screening your phone calls when you were grounded; Those unexpected encounters with people often yielded extraordinary results.
There are a lot of great comments at the end of the entry and it's definitely worth chcking out. For the most part, most people are quick to point out, and Anil concedes, that our new forms of communication often make up for, though do not necessarily replace, those random occurrences.
Based on just my last entry, it's clear that the ability for online tools to generate new links within our social network is not only present but powerful. I'll try to post up some quotes from some of my reading that relate to the power of "weak ties" in the next few days.