Title	Relationships in the Electronic Age
Date:	9/1/2001
Author:	Patricia L. Fry
Source:	Silcion 2.0

Most people today have multiple addresses and phone numbers. We pride ourselves on being more easily accessible to clients, colleagues, friends and family, but are we missing something in our attempt to stay connected?

"The biggest concern is that we often put technology into our communications systems as a means of improving productivity and performance," said Professor Margaret Neale at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, "but we have very little understanding of the impact that technology has on communication patterns."

Neale is one of a few researchers and scientists who are starting to look at how electronic communication is affecting us.

"Unfortunately, we don't know all of the problems that (electronic communication) causes," she said. In the meantime, the optimists and the critics battle it out over the pros and cons. There are those among us who are experiencing negative side effects and those who are benefiting beyond their wildest dreams.

We hear stories of families breaking up because of Internet addiction. There's the issue of increasing obesity in children who are sitting in front of their computers instead of playing outside. And critics say that lack of face-to-face interaction is putting our relationships at risk.

But the Internet is also reuniting families. The lonely and the homebound are finding solace and fellowship through contact with others around the globe. Pagers and cell phones make business transactions more convenient and they allow parents to stay in closer contact with their kids.

Arlene Stepputat is president of Integrity International, a Santa Barbara-based management consulting and training firm. She concurs that technology is changing the way we communicate.

"Cell phones have saved lives, and they have been the source of countless car accidents because we have the notion that we must be accessible 24/7," Stepputat said. With the advent of cell phones, built-in e-mail and the use of pagers, there's no excuse for not being available for communication, and Stepputat sees this as a mistake.

"We have lost our ability to set boundaries so that there is a time when work ends and other activities begin," she said. "There's an immediacy and a pace that I think is a dangerous trend."

'Nowhere One Hundred Percent’ She talked about a day when she was walking on the beach. While she relaxed and enjoyed the beauty of the seashore, she observed a man walking along completely absorbed in conversation on his cell phone.

"In our attempts to be everywhere and go faster and faster, we are nowhere one hundred percent," she said she realized that day.

Some consider the Internet to be a world apart from the real world. People create virtual neighborhoods through their e-mail contacts. They don't know the names of the people who live next door, but they communicate online every day with folks they've never met.

"The irony of the Internet," said Stepputat, "is that you can feel connected to the world while sitting in total isolation from the people who love you in the next room."

Kevin C. Almeroth is an associate professor of computer science at UCSB. He hesitates judging our use of these modern devices. He sees them as just another step in the history of communication.

"When the telephone came along people said, 'Nobody's ever going to leave their house; they're just going to pick up the phone,'" he said, pointing out that forms of communication have been changing forever and are going to continue to change.

Experts fear that because the changes are occurring faster than we can keep up, we're misusing the devices. Technology that is supposed to help us be more productive is actually getting in the way of productivity. In fact, many companies have had to impose restrictions on how employees use e-mail at work.

Roberta Nielsen believes in e-mail communication for business. In fact, as the president of eMentis, Inc., a computer training firm in Santa Barbara, she teaches others how to use e-mail efficiently.

"Make decisions in person, inform via e-mail," she advises. "When you need to convey information such as whether you can attend a meeting or that you need blue pens and yellow sticky notes, send an e-mail. When you need to discuss the customer service issues for your newest product, call a meeting."

Her advice goes along with the widespread notion that e-mail has a tendency to depersonalize our relationships.

'Those Six Words’ Will Black, president of New World Publishing in Minnesota, believes that one must break bread with an individual to learn what they are really like.

"I might have a quantity of knowledge about someone that I would not have it if weren't for e-mails and faxes, but am I closer to them? No, I don't think so," he said.

Black illustrates his point with this story: "I have a friend in Turkey. We e-mail regularly. We talk regularly. His wife died suddenly and I sent messages of condolences to him through e-mail and fax. I sent a card. But nothing really counts until I pick up the telephone and say, 'I am sorry for your loss.' Fifty words of writing cannot replace those six words."

And then there's the other point of view. Dennis Cagan is chairman and CEO of Santa Barbara Technology Group. He finds e-mail a most useful tool throughout his business day, and he disputes the notion that communicating via e-mail is less personal.

"I believe that communicating regularly via e-mail can significantly enhance the personalization of one-to-one communication between people," he said. "E-mail allows you to maintain a more constant communication of a more personal nature in a much easier way than picking up the phone and calling somebody."

Ojai resident Johanna Porter said that this was also true for her. A fairly new computer user, she explained how e-mail helped her establish a relationship with her sister-in-law.

"I consider e-mail a tool for coming out without going out," she said. "I never had a relationship with my sister-in-law before obtaining a computer. We e-mail each other frequently now, and a warm and loving relationship has evolved out of these e-mails."

Meaningful relationships between former strangers have developed for countless people with the advent of the Internet and e-mail. Online romances have resulted in marriage. People tend to have more friends. Cagan, for example, claims to have an e-mail list of nearly a thousand people.

Kim McCormick, a Ventura County resident, met her best friend online. A few years ago, she started an interactive web site called GalPals for women who want a place to go where they can discuss issues of interest to them. While the focus of the site is to exchange useful information, Kim has also watched friendships blossom.

"Meeting on the Internet is very much different than meeting face-to-face," she said. "We all have some sort of pre-judgment that sometimes gets in the way when you meet in person. When you meet online, all you can see about that person is their personality, sense of humor, etc."

And there are miracles occurring and lives changing because of this wider scope of connection.

"I watched a special about the doctor from the South Pole who had breast cancer," said Stepputat, the president of Integrity International. "Without the wizardry of her colleagues who found ways to electronically send a sample of her medical test slides for diagnosis and used computers to be video-guided to administer chemotherapy, she would be dead."

But Stepputat also sees potential misuse of e-mail, describing it as "both a tool and a weapon," depending on how we use it.

Watch for the October issue of Silicon2.0 wherein we'll reveal the results of studies involving how we're using electronic communication in our lives and how it's affecting us. We'll discuss some of the residual dangers stemming from our obsession with being connected such as information overload. And we'll discover more ways that the Internet serves to bring us together.