Nowadays you can learn a lot about people in a relatively short period of time. This can be scary, especially if comes attached only to a person's journal or a keyboard. These things are holograms, schematics....the blueprints, but not the house. You feel this when you talk to the person you've been writing to or reading about. Its hard to add the voice....the instrument of real life. It can be sooo...intimate....strange. To put a physical presence to someone you had only written to in the past is even more surreal. Technology has taken communication to a new level and simultaneously put us into safe cocoons where reality is an option we can choose to explore or not. With that comes new responsibilities, and boundries. 
giga_geo:
that is so true... but at the same time when you interact on the internet with someone.. it is important to remember that it is a real person.. and not just a random program plugging out responses in the conversation you are having. but it does make it easier to communicate because there is less judgement. (at least that's how i feel about it... ) for example, what if you were just sort of mumbling this to yourself and i happened to hear you... in real life, i would not come up to you and start talking to you about how i fell about the subhect.. cause then you would think i was weird. whoa. that was a little longer than expected. don't judge me! Ack! 
babybeezer:
Sometimes I wonder if in my day to day life, do I inadvertantly pass by, sit next to, or interact with someone I've "met" online? I've also found that even if I've chatted with someone for hours and shared secret pieces of my soul with them, I have a huge apprehension of meeting them in person. What if they don't live up to my expectations? What if they were lying to me and are really a psycho rapist? *sigh* Oh, technology is just too much for me sometimes. 