It must be a 'generation' thing.  I much prefer face to face meeting, talking, and directly interacting with people - to me that is social contact.  I have friends and family all over the world and we talk on the phone without a problem.  Many of my friends as well as my wife's and my families don't have a computer or even a cell phone.  I'll be traveling 200 miles on Thrusday to spend the day with a dear friend who is 91.  I do this every month.  I have many such friends and we prefer the social interactions of physical meetings to virtual communities and interactions through email and facebook.   

I guess perfer the nueances of interacting with people face to face (or at least direct voice communication) rather than via cryptic typed messages - but that's just me.

Lex

I guess keeping in constant communications is not important to me and in fact I prefer to avoid it.  I don't let electronic communications devices run my life.  I do have a cell phone but seldom carry it.  My only computer is a desktop and when I leave home it stays behind.  I prefer to control my life and other people's access to it.  This idea that everyone should be able to access me at a moment's notice through texting, email, cellphones, and other media is abhorrant to me (and this includes family members). I prefer solitude and privacy.  It's a personal thing.

Lex

Yet another thing I can agree with you on, Lex. While I use technology more than you, I also put limits on it and recognize that there are problems with the instant-access-always society we are creating, some yet unimagined.

The elders of the Amish and other semi-traditional peoples supposedly meet and decide which new technologies to allow in their societies, thus trying to avoid allowing the worst of them to overwhelm their culture. Alvin Toffler also discussed the problems of unfettered technology at length in his Future Shock book. I think things will eventually reach a crisis and modern societies will also begin to address the issue of how to control technology before it controls us. Finding ways to do it that are nontyrranical will be tricky.

Like you, I prefer technologies that cause one to pause at least a moment before communicating. Thus I prefer email over instant-chat or twitting. While I reluctantly joined Facebook at the urging of relatives, I refuse to respond to some of the useless junk messages that people send there and avoid other time wasters Facebook tries to hook you with.

Unfortunately, I don't think I want to publicize the full extent of my dietary views on Facebook. It might jeopardize my current or future employment. Much of the world's companies and organizations and/or their sponsors would be adversely affected if lots of people adopted this WOE, and they will oppose our point of view even if not many people adopt it. Once it gets on the radar screen the counter attacks will likely be furious, for it challenges much of the consumer society.

I have a cell phone, but hate it. I have never owned a boob tube. Interestingly, I heard that the Amish accepted cell-phones despite having rejected landline phones (something to do with a ban on outside wiring but not phones).

Diet wouldn't necessarily affect my employment, but open membership in an online group that advocates eating raw Paleo and/or says negative things about Non-Paleo foods, cooking, etc. might. For example, my employer receives funding from the dairy industry, so it's not surprising that they promote dairy foods (and whole grains and other junk) themselves and don't take kindly to negative talk about dairy products (and dairy products are also one of the foods that affects me very badly).

You sound like you're from the same school of thought as Lex and me, David (which is "old school" LOL)--and I mean that as a compliment. It's not that I want to give people instant access or that I interrupt people (I'm one of the last of the Mohicans at my workplace who doesn't interrupt conversations and meetings to take a cell phone call and doesn't make loud personal calls, discussing embarrassing personal matters, while coworkers are trying to get work done right beside them), it's that once I had broadband access, email, a cell phone and Facebook (signing up for the last one only after being nagged into it and being called a dinosaur for not already being on it--though I do find it useful for some things, don't get me wrong), OTHER people started EXPECTING instantaneous responses from and constant access to me (and even want me to look things up for them on the Web)--I've had to resist them. Plus, I found instant chat to not be worth the bother so I gave up on it altogether. Lex and I have resisted somewhat the trend toward more frequent and more rapid access, preferring more thoughtful communications. Others have embraced the new paradyne (usually because they grew up with it). Each to their own.

I used to share TD's sentiments on facebook, but I recently joined when I moved far from my family and now I can at least see photos of everyone/my little cousins.  I do, however, get messages from entirely random men asking me how I am doing and how is my husband... geeeezzz, have a little pride... makes me reconsider the account sometimes. 

Cell phone = electronic leash... I hate them!, hardly ever carry the one I have which seems to irritate a lot of people, lol, that I am not available 'on demand'.