Over the weekend I was asked, yet again, if I am on “Facebook”. And, again, I had to say that I had been banned from the site by my children. 
It’s a convenient excuse. I’m linked in, life-locked and registered.com; bio.netted, mypageo’d and plaxo’d.
My business is writing. I spend 4-5 hours each day at the keyboard. I take the phone off the hook and never answer the door. 
My goal is to be less connected, not to update the strangers who call me “friend” of my every move. Being outside at least 1 1/2 hours a day is mandatory; then there’s the market and dinner; answering email. I barely have time to blog.
Must we really know everything at the moment it happens? Witness CNN, FOX and MSNBC. The world is no worse than it was a thousand years ago, we are simply more aware. This is a good thing? Is someone sitting in Boston really interested in a car chase in LA? 
do not think this is a necessity or even a good thing. There are some things best left unsaid. Perhaps most things.
Case in point: I met daughter #1 in Manhattan recently. She had flown out from San Francisco; I from Seattle, to surprise daughter #2 for dinner in the city. What is the first thing she does when she arrives at the meeting spot? She updates her Facebook: “Guess where I am? NYC.”
Of course, the last thing daughter #2 does before she leaves her apartment for what she thinks is a dinner for 2 with her mother—she checks her sister’s Facebook page.
She was surprised, all right, but we missed it. Ironic, no?
Being joined at the hip by technology is dulling. Information overload tends to blur the world instead of clarifying it’s content, and the element of surprise is fading.
Being connected used to mean taking someone by the hand. My advice: Stop Tweeting and take a real friend to lunch.