the spectrum of human interaction

through blogs and other online social media, i have got to know a lot of people in the online world, some important, some successful, some who are trying their best to make it big, some who are just here to experience the world in it's fullness (not that the others are not, but anyway :))

most of them are "around" on the net. some tweet, some reply to every blog comment, some comment on my blog, some merely read my comments to approve them. some comment only on blogs of influential people and personally thank their stumblers.

there are two people who definitely do neither of the above.

seth godin has a blog, which unlike almost all blogs that i've read, has no comments section. no way to communicate with him at all, other than digging/stumbling (which i doubt he checks anyway).

and then there's the top of the pile. tim ferriss doesn't even check his email himself. that's right, he's outsourced his e-mail checking to an army of virtual assistants, who actually handle all his personal communication in such a way that he has to only check his mail for under 10 minutes a day.

in contrast, i spend an hour checking my office mail every morning (and that's just to catch up with what happened between my leaving the office and getting back the next morning) and another hour checking my personal mail in the evening.

i wonder if i should ever go far enough to outsource my email, even if i am as successful as tim ferriss is. if i did, i probably wouldn't have as rich an online community of virtual acquaintances. and somehow, that's about half of what i use the internet for.