I recently received an email message that helped put this all in perspective. It was from an old friend, and it was nothing special, just a note that he'd sold his house and was moving. He included his new address, phone number, and, of course, his email address. I've never been a letter writer in the traditional sense of writing something on paper, finding an envelope, sticking a stamp on it, and mailing it. Yet despite this, I'm an avid emailer. In email, there's no feeling of slaving over stationery with pen in hand that the old letter writing style conjures up (although slaving over the spam filters sometimes seems far worse).

I receive an enormous amount of email messages each day. Many are work-related. Far more are junk. Like everyone else, I also get one or two messages from friends containing silly stories or cute jokes, messages that 10 years ago would have been endearing, but are now just more hassle. These, I generally completely ignore, especially since I generally ask friends and associates to refrain from sending them to me.

Sometimes, though, I get special messages from friends with real, personal information, an actual communication between friends. Even if it's a simple update, like the one from my buddy with the address change, a real connection with good friends is important, special, and satisfying.

The neat thing about these special messages is that they aren't hard work. They often don't include any more than a sentence or two. When I get a message like that, I know one of my friends is thinking of me, which makes me feel good. It also lets me know my friend is OK and reassures me we're still connected -- even if we haven't spoken for a long time.

I have Internet addresses from many friends with whom I stay in touch. But I was still missing the email addresses of a group of good friends who'd pretty much vanished. But when I got my friend's recent message, in the header was a list of people to whom he'd sent his change-of-address note. And in the coded details of the header was the mother lode: email addresses for eight old friends. I hadn't been in touch with them for nearly two decades and now, here they were.

I sent a message to these old friends, and we've started getting back in touch. We've started learning about each other's lives again. Someday soon, I hope my group of wonderful old friends and I will start to pool our list of email addresses and create a a group discussion. Then we be able to stay in touch, simply by posting on a discussion board, and really keep in touch with each others' lives.

So, the next time you're sick of managing your network, just remember you're helping people get closer, catch up on old times with special friends, and share a little bit of love across cyberspace. Somehow, it makes installing that new router seem more worth it.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and can be reached via email at david@zatz.com.