Welcome to the 21st Century! Leave Your Phone Number Behind

This is a first: I just entered the contact information for a new contributor to InformationWeek into my address book, and here's what I put in: His Skype address, his e-mail address, his Second Life avatar name, his Twitter URL, and his blog URL. It feels weird to not have a phone number for the guy -- welcome to the 21st Century, Mitch!

I stopped copying streetmail addresses into my address book years ago, because I didn't need them. I stopped taking fax numbers years before that. And, increasingly, that other stuff is becoming a standing fixture of my address book.

Also, when I got up for work a little while ago, I posted a message on Twitter, and a friend wrote back to wish me a good morning. She's in Melbourne, Australia -- she's starting to think about getting ready for bed.

The friend is someone I know from Second Life. I don't know her real name, or what she looks like, but I know her avatar's name, and what it looks like. Although she may not think of the avatar as "it," I expect she just thinks that's what she looks like when she's in Second Life. And that's good enough for me.

This whole business of living in the future -- and on a round planet, too! -- I'll get used to it eventually.