That's a very interesting observation. I hadn't thought of that.

My own clients are flung across the U.S. with a handful in Europe and Asia. I haven't met about a third of them in person, although I see a few through videoconferencing. This is fortunate, as my beauty is such that it would probably only distract everyone from the business at hand.

Um, hasn't it always been like that? If anything the New Media world allows us to treat EVERYONE that way, including those down the hall.

So in that respect it CREATES distance.

The more telling part of David's story is the constant connectedness moreso than the lack of physical meeting. It's true he hadn't ever shaken Josh's hand, but he'd been a constant face on his computer screen through Skype for the better part of his tenure. The meeting was a nice formality, as opposed to a major event. That, I think is where the biggest change has occurred.

mnpundit

interesting observation. when i worked in the corporate world, i began noticing so many people in the same office relying on email to communicate with each other rather than walking over and talking face to face. we gain convenience and lose personal interaction.

I don't see the connection. Your grandfather had nearly complete autonomy with only an occassional letter setting big picture goals.

In today's world, people are micromanaged from a distance by people they've never even met.

I trade emails with my home office at least 100 times a day. It makes you get a check down for every last little thing.

I work as a consultant and I've met fewer than half of my clients. And I haven't seen a single one in nine months.

What amazes me about the past is how they conducted diplomacy. How does one communicate with an ambassador in Thailand from Washington DC in the early nineteenth century? Letters were the only way, and they could take months to arrive. An ambassador could adopt a rogue policy that could go on for almost a year before anyone in Washington could shut it down. It might take six months just to find out about it. It's amazing we functioned at all.

An ambassador could adopt a rogue policy that could go on for almost a year before anyone in Washington could shut it down. It might take six months just to find out about it. It's amazing we functioned at all.

Hmmm, I see a way to mitigate our pain at the spinelessness of the Democratic Congress. I'm going to pretend it's 1860, my government is fucking with my civil liberties, and our congressmen would be doing something about it if the slowness of the wartime mails and limited capacity of the Pony Express weren't delaying them from learning about it.

I had an analogous feeling when I taught in Italy one summer and went off to check my e-mail after dinner every day. On the one hand, it was very newfangled, but it also reminded me of nineteenth-century novels about the Grand Tour when everyone would retire to their rooms to write letters.

My own clients are flung across the U.S. with a handful in Europe and Asia. I haven't met about a third of them in person, although I see a few through videoconferencing.

Same for me, except that more of them are in Europe and Asia and I've met even less in person -- probably no more than 5%, come to think of it.

This is fortunate, as my beauty is such that it would probably only distract everyone from the business at hand.

Again, same for me.

Well before e-mail became popular, one of the airlines ran an ad which I thought was very effective, about how some fictitious business' employees were no longer communicating with clients face-to-face, and were doing everything by phone and fax and mail. The boss said it was hurting the business, and handed out plane tickets (remember those?) to each of the employees to fly out and meet a client.

It has ever been thus.

Nice try Kevin, but we know you don't really exist.