Do You Remember Old What's-His-Face(book)?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." These words from Arthur C. Clarke tumbled through my head as I considered the horns of my new dilemma, Facebook. I am presently besieged with requests from voices from my past to become part of their network of friends. "It's free, and anyone can join." That makes me nervous. Thanks to Al Gore's Internet, it has become easier than ever to reach out and touch someone.
But what if I don't want to be touched? I'm the kind of guy who routinely has to charge his cell phone battery not because it has been used so much, but because it has sat in the bottom of my book bag with nothing to do. I like the illusion of rolling through life without connection. If I'm such a loner, why then would I even consider these invitations to join up with the latest on-line gathering? Perhaps it's because I secretly want to be part of a larger group, but I don't want to appear too eager.
There's that service that is supposed to put you in touch with the people you went to high school with, if you're willing to give them your personal information and allow them to contact you when they have something they need to tell you. Or sell you. I found out that it's free to have your name listed, but it costs money to find out who is looking for you, and that's where my search ended. All those Boulder High Panthers from the class of 1980 will just have to find another way to reach me, since I've stopped taking mail from Classmates.com.
Then there's this Facebook thing. I was just commiserating with my mother-in-law about how comfortable we can get with a certain level of technology. She had just learned how to listen to tracks on her CD player in random order. That was a revelation for her. My wife has been entranced with Facebook for some time now, and I'm fairly certain that is where all of these ghosts from my past have started to knock on my virtual door. "One of us, one of us," they seem to intone. But first I have to join.
What happens after that? I could be connected with all of those faces and places that I have so neatly filed away over the past thirty-some years. I could find a valuable new network of like-minded individuals. Or I might find another vast and ever-widening vortex into which I could throw my time. I wonder if Arthur C. Clarke would have been on Facebook.