Social networking spawns some interesting conversations. Earlier this week, Paul Hinz, a colleague at Sun, sent the following message to accompany his LinkedIn connection request:

“Great meeting at ASM. Here’s the proverbial LinkedIn request. In 20 years, what will we think about the phase of “hey, let’s connect”? Will it be as common as flying cars?”

To that pithy question, I had to respond. For what it is worth, here’s what I offered in return:

“Thanks for the connection. I hope that in 20 years, connections via social networks (or what every they are called then) are more automatic, such as registering a connection when we shake hands, like we did at ASM. I’ve really tried to keep track of people I connect with for the last 20 years, with increasing degrees of sophistication. I sense that the next 20 will bring a flood of improvements we haven’t even thought of yet.”

Re-reading that, I think I waxed a bit too philosophical at the time. But it will indeed be interesting to look back in 20 years and remember what the wild and wooly west of social networking was doing in its infancy.

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