If Heidigger had a Facebook...

In Heidigger's The Thing, he says on page 163,

"Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is the least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness." 

I was transported back to earlier this semester as I was writing my Socratic Dialogue on Facebook as a false cure for loneliness. Heidigger pretty much sums up what I wish I could have been eloquent enough to express in my paper. He goes on to discuss the thingness of things and what constitutes this thingness. However, I was thinking of the above quote in reference to relationships and friendships.

The distance between you and a friend does not necessarily mean you are far removed from each other. You can keep in contact, perhaps using Facebook or other technology, and remain "un-remote" to each other. For "nearness [to a person] does not consist in shortness of distance." Nearness is more about your actual relationship to the person and a relationship can persist despite distance. However, I would not argue that Facebook, or any other form of communication over a distance, is ideal for remaining "near" to your friends. I was just intrigued by the idea that even though you might be far from something, it is not necessarily inaccessible, or remote, to you. And contrarily, something that is shown to you in a picture or in a video is not necessarily accessible to you; it can remain remote.