"My very soul is on the World Wide Web!"

The title to this post is a direct quote from a college friend who used to spend three hours on a two paragraph e-mail. After some good natured ribbing from myself and a few other friends, he's down to about 20 minutes for those e-mails now. But he explained why it took him so long to write e-mails. He was so concerned about the fact that, in theory, what he wrote would be a permanent piece of writing that would forever be accessible online. He did not want even the most cursory word to diverge from his exact intention. Most of us treat e-mails as we might a Post-It note: good for quick thoughts and designed to disappear after their usefulness is gone. But something about the internet has turned us into "transparent" people. I use quotes around transparent because I feel like transparency is something that can only happen when there is some sort of emotional interaction that happens between people who have some idea of each others actual identity.