Since the dawn of the internet and the ubiquitous chat-box, I’ve been fascinated by the ever-increasing facility of instant communication with just about anyone, anywhere, anytime.

I remember just how out of the world cool it was to type a sentence on my Mac and for it to appear – one letter at a time – on the screen of my friend’s Mac instantaneously. And I won’t even go into how jaw-droppingly awesome it was to use a modem for the first time.

Then there were the early days of AOL member chat, occasionally joining the “40-something” chat-room and actually carrying on a decent conversation with perfect strangers. That lasted only a short while before the chat-rooms became too crowded and the conversations declined to queries of one’s mode of dress, or rather, un-dress, as it were.

The bulletin boards born of the BBS and VBBS systems in the nascent days of the internet were the place to go if chat rooms weren’t your thing.

I dabbled in those only very briefly before finding the next generation of forums at the dawn of the century – one in particular that became the birthplace of my online persona of another name.

Then personal vanity websites evolved into web-logs which took about two seconds to be reduced to “blog.” I eventually and serendipitously, along with now about 6,663,642,300 other people, found a small voice in the blog universe. Well, actually two of those voices are mine.

Along with blogs we now have the rapidly growing social-networking trend with MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Linkdin, ad naseum. Internet popularity contests designed to trigger loads of anxiety in my inner, very insecure, high school self.

So all this has been swirling in my brain of late, triggered by the stream of Twitter tweets which punctuate my day. Twitter is an intriguing little communication tool that I haven’t decided whether or not I like.

On the plus side, I can – and do – use it to notify the hive of twitterers that I have new blog posts ready for the enjoyment and edification, thus driving a stampede of one or two readers to my blog door.

Some “tweets” that trickle by are interesting. Another twittering friend has a habit of sending out obscure “tweets” that seem to come from some odd corner of his mind. They are always intriguing, if not perplexing. I engaged in a Twitter haiku round there for a while which was challenging and a bit fun …

… but, I find myself wondering – to what purpose? And, yet, I’m drawn to it like a magnet to the fridge. Here is a micro-world of people, myself included, mostly sending out spontaneous thoughts to the ether just ‘cuz.

What drives the compulsion to share a thought – right now – with the universe? Are we entering an era of talking at rather than with? Are we already there?

And, intriguingly, why do I have nearly every portal open – IM, SMS, iPhone, e-mail, social-network accounts, you name it – and rarely walk through to say “hello…”

….with the exception of the blogs. And, perhaps now Twitter, which is hailed as micro-blogging, so that makes sense.

And why am I more comfortable spewing out my thoughts in a blog than tapping someone on their virtual shoulder and saying “You wanna do lunch?”

It may have something to do with lack of anonymity, shyness, fear of… whatever. I suppose that would be a few dollars spent for couch time and a brain dusting if I wanted to go that route.

Or I could point to another portal – the comments section of this blog – and invite you, dear reader, to offer your opinion.

So, I do.

Let’s do lunch and discuss this communication thing. I think we have enough for a four-top.