A recent entry from Chuck muses thoughtfully on blogs as sites for potential academic connections, essentially offering a rebuttal to Benjamin's fearof technological isolation.

Not only do I think that blogging does offer all this great potential for connection, let's not forget how personal connections can be overrated.

An example: Yesterday, I got onto a packed red line train toward Metro Center. I had to stand just inside the door against a plexiglass partition for support. About two or three stops later, another surge of people got on. So here I am standing intimately close to a very attractive young woman.

We were mere inches apart, close enough for me to notice that her Brown hair was flecked with red, close enough to notice how skillfully she had covered her not-perfect skin with foundation, close enough to associate her perfume with an ex's, a pungent-sweet, sharp-but-soft vanilla scent that still conjures bad memories. So close that I couldn't see her whole face in profile.

I haven't been as close to anyone I actually know, outside of Ann, for years. And yet here, in this incredibly intimate situation, I found myself unable to know anything about this other person. I'll surely never see her again.

So while blogging forges connections over distance, the f2f that Benjamin privileges as often as not ends up a bust, precisely because it's too intimate.

Technology and urbanity don't eliminate intimacy. They just change the contexts under which we can experience it.