Re. E-mail's social implications

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

     Misti Delaney notes that the trust you develop
     over the course of a long e-mail relationship can
     be as deep as what you develop in face-to-face
     meetings. This is true, as several e-marriages (!)
     have proved, but remember that you're still
     dealing with people, and people are more than the
     social face that you see. A case in point:

     Back in my bulletin boarding (BBS) days, I
     developed a deep and trusting friendship with a
     woman who ran a BBS. We chatted daily, for hours
     sometimes, including phone calls later in the
     relationship. One day, an e-friend (!) from the
     same BBS called to ask my advice about a dilemma:
     he was being coaxed by "someone (female) we both
     knew" to use his hacking skills to break into a
     city computer, and he knew others who were under
     similar pressure. Shortly afterwards, I lost
     contact with him and with the woman who ran the
     BBS. No clear idea of what happened, except that
     the BBS was there one day and gone the next, and
     the paper ran a story shortly afterwards about a
     woman in the same area as my e-friends who had
     been arrested for running using teenagers to hack
     into city computers. I don't believe in most
     coincidences.

     This wouldn't have affected my relationship with
     the woman, as she was always fair and honest with
     me, except that I moved out of the city shortly
     afterwards and had no way of getting back in touch
     other than through her BBS. My point is that what
     we see through our social interactions is only the
     tip of the iceberg, and many a ship gets sunk on
     that part that lies unseen beneath the waves.

     --Geoff Hart    @8^{)}
     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

     Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one
     of our reports, it don't represent FERIC's
     opinion.