Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World

The notion of friendship is under broad review. A highly mobile and increasingly busy society—rootless, some might argue—means that most of our relationships can't depend solely on face-to-face contact to flourish. The increasing prominence of the virtual landscape—where the language of friendship has been co-opted to describe relationships ranging from intimate to meaningless—requires that we become fluent in ever-expanding relational technologies. It's never been easy to be a friend, but it seems to be getting tougher by the nanosecond. In