Flat world

Just about to finish reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Started reading it on recommendations from one of my bosses and tho' I am not a non-fiction person, this one really got me hooked. We really are living in interesting times, blogging, orkut, e-banking- all this was unheard of when I was in school. So when we left school, we could not even give out e-mail addresses! But here we are- all my school's on orkut and I have found them a good ten years or so after I passed out. But what happens to all those who get left out of this 'flattening' process- the accessibility to technology changing by the minute- Friedman says the built up frustration fires up these deprived sections, sometimes driving them to terrorist acts. Scary but true. We have no right to leave the others behind, no one must miss the 'flattening' effect, the google, orkut, blog and e-mails of the world. But what worries me is that the personal touch, the intimate signature on postal letters that travel through days via red letter boxes and mail vans, the pleasure of meeting your classmate 'unvirtually'- it is all just fading off and that's painful somewhere, somehow-despite orkut.