Before long, we could send messages to each other online, and attach Word documents. (Still no Powerpoint. We had to carry Kodak slide carousels on airplanes for the next few years.) Email seemed like a fantastic tool, allowing individuals to communicate not in real time, but in YourTime - the time that worked for each participant. It was so great that everybody started using it for everything, and the sacred and secular wove a tapestry of constant nattering as all things great and small vied for supremacy of the Inbox. Every morning started with an hour of "doing email" to clear out the messages that had arrived overnight. A day offsite meant email double duty. Forget real vacations. We finally had to get Crackberries so we could fight the tide en route. The Tool became the Master.

Meanwhile the Internet began to offer ways to speak not just to each other individually or in small groups through emails among people who recognized each other, but also social networking sites that allowed anyone to express an opinion, using any persona. "On the Internet, nobody cares if you're a dog." A true meritocracy, all that matters is that your opinion is interesting to somebody else. Or a lot of somebodies.

MySpace, EBay, and Second Life opened the bidding, with avid participants. More recently, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have been growing (by some accounts 1000% a month), and the pressure is on to be there or risk being viewed as a dinosaur in this hip new age of "always on." We have a very smart professional friend who recommends Twittering no less than three times a day (365/year), Facebooking (these are new verbs, notice) twice a day, and keeping up with Linked In, while offering content there on a near-daily basis. (Then go do your email.)

Right now, the social websites are a great tool. We can reach hundreds, thousands of people. Gen Y won't even "do" email. They have all the connectedness they need with texts and Twitter and Facebook, thanks. But the question now is this: Just as faxes, email, and Second Life faded in urgency and glamour, so will the current leaders. What will replace them, when we get tired of being pressured to "be there" all the time, or being followed by strangers, or Twitter begins to charge users, or dubious businesses fill our TweetBoards with the equivalent of spam? Will we need a new handheld device to beat back the incoming electrons? If we use a program to feed our thoughts to three or four of these sites at a time, why do we need more than one? Will the next round offer pre-cognitive sorting technology that will allow us to "follow" thousands but only see a handful?

How do we all - individuals, organizations, informal groups, businesses, customers - make the most of the inevitable increase in interconnectedness to get more of what we want from life, without becoming a slave?