If you expect less from people, you may not be less disappointed.

That book by Sherry Turkle still has me thinking.

So, when technology goes unchecked, what are the long-term effects? After never seeming to find time to reflect and turn off the devices that keep us constantly distracted, while we’re always afraid that we might miss something, how does that change us? How is it effecting my strengths and my shortcomings? How does it affect relationships?

For one thing, according to Turkle, we lessen our expectations of each other. We expect less from our managers, less from our friends, less from each other. Okay, we won’t expect less from our politicians – we can’t expect less from our politicians – but what about the rest of us?

If I regularly write things on other people’s walls, it will no doubt look like I have lots of friends, and it’s not inconceivable that I might conclude I am popular and well-liked. But how demanding are those friendships? When I apologize, is it okay to apologize to Facebook? Will I get used to someone checking his or her phone while I’m talking? Will I get used to people always being somewhere else? When will the sound of someone laughing become a rare and precious moment relative to someone writing that they’re laughing? When will the appearance of authenticity be enough authenticity? When will superficiality trump our warts-and-all complexity? Since we can always write, edit and sculpt our messages, even manipulate our Instagram photos, when will “performance” (Turkle’s word) feel like life?

 “The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy,” writes Turkle.

I think about this as it pertains to brands: Will brands that don’t strike the right balance of medium and message, who put too much emphasis on social and the "conversation," who never produce that piece of artful film (or whatever) that speaks to people’s dreams and therefore establishes the context for an important conversation, who never meet their consumer on the street or never put a real voice on the other end of the customer service line, will we expect less of those brands?

Forget about brands – will our humanity be compromised? She writes, “Are we ready to see ourselves in the mirror of the machine and to see love as our performances of love?”