Recently I was going through old correspondence that I had saved, you know, the old school type. The one that is handwritten, stamped and mailed. The one that you waited for a week or so to show up to its destination. Yeah, that one.

In any case, along with handwritten letters, I also found out printouts of my first internet friendships and it struck me as intriguing that it's been ten year since I've known some of these individuals. People that were once random connections in a chat room, talking about soccer, or how college compared between the US and their country, are now acquaintances or good friends.

With some people I've stayed in touch, I've found on Facebook or some other social network, and with others I've completely lost touch. Just like physical addresses, people move out of an email or an IM username and then they become incognito.

It's interesting to look back, even as recent as ten years ago, and see what's happened to acquaintances and relationships. Today's youth probably won't know what it means to be to lose touch given that they friend everyone they know on Facebook (and Facebook-like services). I guess for them losing touch won't mean not knowing anything about their former acquaintances... This is interesting to think about...