Two reactions arrived about that column. Perhaps paradoxically they accent the blurred boundaries I've already referred to. They do so not because of their content, but rather because of who they're from: my brother and sister.

Why would siblings carry out a discussion between themselves on web pages? (Yes, I admit that we aren't exactly carrying out a discussion, rather I'm transferring an e-mail discussion to a web page, but the original catalyzer for the discussion was a web page.) In a world with more distinctly defined barriers between the public and the private we'd probably sit down and speak face to face, and since geographically that's not a possibility, letters are a fine substitute.

And of course if we're dealing with catalysts, most of them are probably public: a television program, a book we've read, an item in the news, so ultimately the only thing that's changed because of the internet is the fact that Libbe and Mark's little brother takes their private e-mail correspondance and hangs it up on a web page, inviting others, friends, acquaintances, readers, (even lurkers?) to join in.

Mark's comments focused on the extention of the private into the public and asked whether the opposite wasn't the case as well:

On the other hand, we have also been expanding the reach of the public into our private spaces, and this came first.
Newspapers were originally posted in public, then home delivered. Later we got radio, etc.

Your piece made me think of a conference I went to a few weeks ago on loneliness. The keynote speaker (a friend and former supervisor) talked a lot about the steadily increasing alienation in western thought and society, beginning with Descartes' putting the cart before the horse. Rather, we think because we are, ie we are meaning-making creatures, which requires interaction (George Herbert Mead), so less interaction leads to less meaning, ie alienation from self as well as others. Interaction via computer is way better than none, but pretty one-dimensional. What's missing in particular is emotion, visual cues of feelings, faces. Which makes for a kind of flatness in a person, a lack of internalized others, clinically known as 'schizoid.'

And, that kind of isolation and privacy are often necessary. New York subway and street etiquette requires avoiding eye contact - hordes of people in close proximity allow each other personal space by averting their gaze.