Gabe Henderson, a graduate student at Iowa State University recently wrote an open letter that could have been a social suicide note. He acknowledged his decision to cancel his MySpace account. He pulled the plug after realizing that many of his online friends were really just acquaintances.

Says Henderson,

Why you ask? Well, I suppose it boils down to what friendship means to me. Before MySpace, I had conceptions of friends. I could call them, talk, hang up and feel like I had a connection beyond the phone line. In a sense, it required genuine time and energy that could only deepen my appreciation for that person; it nourished and fulfilled the bond we share.

In June, I joined MySpace. Excitedly, I became reacquainted with old friends and felt great.

It was addictive. I would type my password, wait a second and discover a new message or comment. How satisfying to know someone cared to write a cynical, sarcastic or "how are you" comment on MY space. Over time, it became a part of my daily routine to interact with my list of friends.

As time progressed, however, I started to think more deeply about this new sense of awe and excitement. I started to think about "friendship" and what it meant. For me, investing both time and emotion in someone and them investing in me is something I value in a friendship.

With MySpace, I realized how easy it became to have and maintain "friends" in my life. I started to feel dissatisfied by the ease and convenience of it all. To my utter dismay and shock, I discovered my reliance on technology, manifested in MySpace and reduced my friends to comments, messages and pictures on a computer screen.

Entire human beings, full of complexities, nuances, beliefs, etc. being reduced to quick little remarks just so that the other person knows that the other still exists. The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt.

The consequences are very subtle but significant. In a society in which technology, convenience and consumerism motivate our conceptions of how to operate efficiently, it seems we have lost to some degree that special depth that true friendships entail.

Has the word "friend" been transplanted to mean "acquaintance"? Have we become nothing more than advertisements on a screen? Is it really possible to feel a deep connection with someone when it is so easy? In a sense, has apathy crept into our relationships, reasoning that doing as little as possible means maintaining a connection with someone?

In the end, are more significant aspects of society being sacrificed?

Does MySpace influence our patterns of thought, as well as how we even speak to one another?

Does MySpace negatively impact our ability to hold deep conversations? In general, is it really strengthening our friendships? I’m not so sure.

Put simply, has friendship become too easy?

Maybe the tide is turning a bit. Professor Michael Bugeja, director of Iowa State’s journalism school and author of “Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in Technological Age” thinks that we are getting to a saturation point. Maybe now we will know when to be with someone, rather than walking across campus with a friend but talking to someone else on a cell phone.

Henderson, interviewed later, comments about the life he is enjoying with friends,

”I’m not sacrificing friends by signing off MySpace and Facebook because if a picture, some basic information about their life and a Web page is all my friendship has become, then there was nothing to sacrifice to begin with.”

In our personal and business strategies, we need to continually look for ways to develop real community with our colleagues, customers, and friends. In the final analysis, a business is not an abstract construct, but a community of people working purposefully together to serve one another and make a difference in the world. The Bible calls this community, oikos, or household. It’s the root word for oikonomia from which we get “economy”. We were made to be persons, not data streams. Anything we can do to build true relational communities helps each of us realize the joy of what it means to be made in the image of God. And that, in turn, lifts us out of the rising dehumanizing muck of our modern world.