I bumped into someone new the other week. Someone who seemed nice, interesting, someone you'd think would be a good person to know. And we exchanged email addresses and the usual pleasantries about staying in touch. Time was that would have been it. But in the 48 hours after saying hello a thing happened that I'd not really noticed quite so bluntly; a form of social docking. Various connections were offered and accepted, on flickr, last, dopplr, twitter ; it struck me at the time as being like one of those space station docking sequences in a movie. Hoses extended and were coupled on, and the vapours of ambient intimacy started being pumped; the vapours that convert acquaintances into friends. It's good. I've always liked those docking/undocking sequences.
