What is it with texting? As we mediate our relationships through the screen with words that become smaller and smllr, will we end up communicating in 1s and 0s? We're encouraged to produce more and more ideas and words about our bodies, emotions and souls (see Rose, N. (1998), Inventing Our Selves. Psychology, Power and Personhood., Cambridge). Yet we seem encouraged to perform stories about our selves as chunks of information (from Lyotard, see (1)), à la carte emotions as it were. I suspect we are keen on forms of lay reductionism in one way or another (2) to make the world a simpler place. How often do you come across people who encourage you to connect personal/local/national/global? How welcome would that person be?
(1) Webster, F.T. (2002), Theories of the Information Society (2nd Edition), London, Routledge.
(2) See chapter 5 in Slife, B.D., & Williams, R.N. (1995), What's Behind the Research? Discovering the Hidden Assumptions in the Behavioural Sciences, London, Sage.