[[ MODERNIZING LOVE ]]

What is love in the context of a Twitterized world? Years ago the interest is on "no strings attached" sex that for many wasn't turning out to be so carefree. The question that seemed to hover was: How do we get the physical without the emotional?

What a difference three years make. This time the most-asked question was the opposite: How do we get the emotional without the physical? How do we grow and deepen our relationships in a wired world. Today,relationships are grown and deepened almost exclusively via laptops, webcams, online chats and text messages. Unlike the sexual risk-taking of the hookup culture, this is love so safe that what's most feared is not a sexually transmitted disease but a computer virus, or perhaps meeting the object of your affection in person.

The Internet and smartphones are obliterating the geographical boundaries that used to define one's dating pool. We read about high school couples that no longer split up when they go to separate colleges because, well, why should they when they can still spend practically every waking moment in touch and even in sight? The same goes for foreign-study flings that carry on after lovers are once again on separate continents. And then there are those who are in a relationship that started and ended on Facebook walls and never really met physically in between coupling up and breaking up.

We can only ask the possibility and peril of this kind of pixelated long-distance love story. Is this trend to going to be around for long? Is Skype-ing as satisfactory as good old cuddling?