The distance that grows as interactivity improves

For all the progress being made toward reducing the sense of distance between geographically dispersed populations, there's an equal and opposite distance being created amongst people standing next to eachother.  We can make two people who couldn't be physically further from each other feel like they are face-to-face.  And yet two people sharing the same air space can coexist without ever speaking to eachother.

As I post this I'm wondering if the engineer who sits maybe 2 feet away from me will know that I'm blogging about her.  We exchange pleasantries most days, but since we're not working on the same projects, we might as well be in different countries.

Email, IM, blogging, RSS and all the Internet-based forms of communication encourage a lightweight human interaction model that is replacing real world human interaction. 

We can interact with more people, but we interact less with each person.  Is this bad?

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