Originally uploaded by jlmoyni at 18 Feb '09, 8.31pm EST PST.

I can remember when I was a kid I had a pen pal. Well, more of a pen acquaintance really. In truth, it was really just this kid I wrote a letter to once. I think it might have been a school thing or something but somehow I got a name and address of this kid and was asked to write a letter to him. I think he was from Ottowa or Ohio or some other place I didn't care about and I can remember wracking my brains trying to come up with questions to ask him;

"I heard you have lots of corn where you are. What's that like? I like corn"
"I live near the ocean. Do you know what an ocean is? It's like a lake only way bigger and better. It must really stink not living near the ocean."

I think it was probably three months later that I came home from school and there was a letter waiting for me. This kid had responded to all of my in depth questions. The problem was that I had written the letter 3 months before and I couldn't remember what the hell I had asked . It was like I had received a letter from a deranged mental patient;

"Our lakes are fine thanks, besides I don't like seafood and I can have corn anytime I want."

Huh? I had no idea what he was talking about. Needless to say I did not write back to this crackpot thus ending my first and last foray into the world of pen palsmanship (marksmanship, stewardship ... shut up it's a word).

For some reason I thought about this after I had just been hanging out with my kids. They were home in Massachusetts and I was in a hotel room an entire continent away in San Diego and we were talking through a high definition video conferencing system that I had set up in my room. With this I was able to see them everyday and say goodnight. They could call me on it anytime as well if they wanted to talk with Dad. It just struck me how much things have changed just in the short time from when I was a kid. Our kids are living in a world completely different from the one I grew up in. It used to be if you had a friend who went away for the summer that was it, you didn't get to see them or talk with them for three months. These days, kids are in constant contact with their friends no matter where in the world they are. We now have the ability to provide as much information about our lives to as many people as we want. For example,I just got back from a vacation where I was sending updates and pictures from Disney World as they were happening in real time for friends and family to follow on the web. I email, text, video, and phone people all over the country on a daily basis. Hell, I even send out Twitter updates so that complete strangers can know what I am doing or thinking whenever I choose to update them, and I'm not even sure why I do it (by the way feel free to follow me at http://twitter.com/jmoynihan ).

Granted, I am an IT guy so it makes sense that I do all of these things but now everyone is doing it and not just the geeks. I'm lucky in that I have access to high end video conferencing equipment because of my job but anybody with a computer can use Skype or OoVoo or iChat and I know some extremely technophobic people who routinely text and send pictures using their phones.

I know what you are all thinking and I agree that there are downsides to all of this information being available but in my opinion they do not come close to offsetting the advantages. The botom line is that I just spent a week 2500 miles, two mountain ranges, and countless rivers and other obstacles away from my family and yet every day I sat and talked with them as if we were in the same room with each other, and that, to me, is priceless.

It's a wonderful time to be living in. I can only imagine what my kids will be thinking in thirty years with their children;

"Do you remember when all we could do was talk via high def video? How did we live like that?

Cheers