What do you think, MySpaced out?

Isn’t technology great? I mean, I can call my family in Mexico via cell phone.

I don’t even need the country code because I can dial a local number.

Heck, if they had an Internet telephony service (notice I wrote telephony, not telephone, thereby demonstrating my techie hipness) like Skype, we could talk over the computer.

Man, I’m networked, I’m patched-in. I can cruise along the online social networking sites like Squido, Facebook, MySpace, Classmates, and communicate with friends and acquaintances across the country and around the world.

I can zip here and zip there, I can ICQ, upload my mp3 and download a photo of a honeybee.

I can make nouns into verbs.

I look around and I see lots of people doing the same thing. That guy at Starbucks last weekend chatting with a friend? He was using chat software on his laptop. His friend wasn’t even there.

It’s turning traditional interaction on its head and creating whole new ways to interface.

Today I can tune in to online book discussion groups, take online classes, start a business, meet new people, all from the comfort of my home. I can even do it while I’m traveling.

I can blog, fileshare, and Google wherever I have an Internet connection and a computer available.

Isn’t life great?

But is all this cyber connectivity bringing us closer together or pulling us further apart? Are we MySpacing out?

Interesting side note: Fraternal organizations are scrambling to recruit new members. These are the organizations that used to be the glue for communities, groups like Rotary, Lions Club, Kiwanis.

Lynnwood Kiwanis Club has a member who hasn’t missed a meeting in more than 50 years.

Is there a connection between the decline in civic involvement and the advent of instant communication?

I dunno. Fraternal organizations started their membership freefall before most people were using the Internet.

There’s a good book on this subject called “Bowling Alone, the Collapse and Revival of American Community” by Robert Putnam. You can check it out of the library (via the Internet, of course.)