the coming communication shift?

First, let me say I've only been blogging for a couple months, and sporatically at that. Even so, I have noticed three signficant changes to the way i communicate with others, particularily friends and family (sorry mom!!):

1. I communicate with actual human beings less and less. I have never been a huge telephone fan to begin with (I can easily ignore not only a ringing phone, but the subsequent VM for a week or more) or newsy email writer, so I have long relied on (short!) emails and IM to synch up with my mom, sis, and friends in desparate locations. Now, rather than spending quality time on the phone or writing emails to let people know daily detail ad naseum -- even if they are local, I point them to my blogs. It's more convenient (for me), cheaper than long distance (for me) and i can save my telephone energy (for me) for *important* conversations. Note to self: Blogging also appears effective at revealing the depth of one's selfishness... but that's another entry. How bad is it? Consider that I now read friend's blogs to find out what i'm doing this weekend. I don't ring people to find out what's happening with them, i shame them into updating their blogs. And... I tell my mom to watch my blog to see when i'm coming to visit. That's bad. (I'm going to hell, I'm going to hell, I'm going to hell) The upside is when we do get together in person we won't have to waste the first two days catching up.


2. I can scale my communications like never before. I can keep more people in the loop in less time than ever before but just sending them my link(s) There are no emails to bounce back. No one feels pressured to reply. And it's so much more personal, in its own one-to-many way.


3. I write more now than when I was paid to write, and like it more. Because it's easy, fun and pressure-free. Bonus: Everybody gets the same story and I don't have to search my sent mailboxes to remember what I said two weeks ago: It's all right there in zeros and ones.

Is this a shift in the way some of will communicate to our extended circles going forward? Consider results of a recent Pew Research study:

• Only 2% of adult internet users have blogs, but...


• 11% of adult netizens read blogs (there's that scale thing I was talking about in #2), mostly...


• those of friends (56%), family (25%) and complete strangers (46%) [Personally i find that last stat a bit spooky. But, er, wait a sec, i do that! <blush>]

Could this be a trend that will end all letter-writing and further reduce long-distance revenue for phone companies? What else will be impacted?

Well... least I won't be a complete dunce (just mostly a dunce) when my 9-year-old daughter informs me she wants a blog. After all, this guy's son kicked off his own blog in 2001... at age 7. Of course his dad's a card-carrying geek (you do have a card, robert, don't you?) and I'm not (right? right? i need validation here!).