The three-day rule. It’s the unwritten guideline that you wait three days after getting a phone number to call someone. Before three days, you’re considered desperate. Afterwards, you’re inconsiderate. Unfortunately, societal manners have not caught up with technology to decide on appropriate rules for the Facebook, texting and various other ways of communication. This is one of those times where technology has advanced to such a degree mankind cannot fathom its implications. First snap bracelets, now this. Thanks, science.

Maybe you’ve tried calling someone using their Facebook-listed phone number, only to hear Domino’s Pizza on the other end. Or you’ve poked someone and had their parents contact you about wedding arrangements. The wall-to-wall posting mechanism is innocent enough. That is, until that time you have cyber sex and it goes on the newsfeed. The best friend she’s “married” to probably isn’t happy about that. When I wrote about Facebook.com three years ago, I never thought it would be interweaved in the social tapestry of college life as seamlessly as a wrecked old tanker.

The issue that confronts our generation is an uncertainty, a perpetual grey area in terms of what is considered an appropriate way of communicating with one another. Is an e-mail more casual than a message, a poke, a wall post, a text? How long do you have to know the person before you can message them? Why does newsfeed keep posting my social security number? Mark Zuckerberg is the Oppenheimer of the college social scene, and he can’t take back the power that he has unleashed upon confused undergrads. We’re now in a technological arms race, and to be left out would be social annihilation. I hear that North Korea might be developing a “Facebook” weapon.

I wasn’t surprised by the Daily’s report on how students may have obsessive behavior about e-mail checking. The age of instant gratification has now gotten to the point where students not only want to be accessible by phone at all times, but they want to read e-mails the instant they are sent. G-mail is currently working on a system so users can get e-mails before they are actually written. G-Oracle.

While we struggle with these questions, we remind ourselves that this is the age of convenience. Things are only going to get more convenient from here on out. We’re only going to have more ways of instantly talking to people and we will find new ways to digitally transfer our social functions online. Dating. Slaying Dragons. Even sex. Deus Ex MySpace.

I’ve known couples who share online RPG characters rather than going out to dinner. As they level up, the relationship does as well. I’m sure their conversations on whether they should sell the troll’s blood or attack the goblins opens a window into each other’s souls. They just wish those souls had USB ports.

Isaac Asimov’s novels on androids focus on the idea that artificial intelligence can be distinguished from humanity because humans have empathy. Humans nowadays worry so much about what others perceive in their use of technology that they are actually bound by it. We’re afraid of being considered sketchy, of scaring off that potential romantic interest. The modern novel of manners includes references to messaging, texting and the hilarious mix-ups of finding love in the digital age. Possible title: “I, Jane Austen (A Victorian Android’s Tale).” Our entire lives can be read on newsfeed and our relationships can be reduced to a heart icon and a few lines of text. A computer virus would only superficially wipe away what we know is already gone: humanity.

Technology gives some people confidence that the normal world does not. Being a level 60 wizard will do that for you. But the rise of technology has also stunted and confused a generation. College social traditions like coffee houses, kegger and water-boarding the pledges have been taken away. The Stanford Challenge would get more student participation if it focused on concrete goals students can relate to, like figuring out the poking feature.

But I don’t think this is entirely a new problem. We’ll always have difficulty relating to one another, and technology hasn’t made it any easier. It takes a conscious effort to turn off AIM, put the cell on vibrate and tell G-mail to shove it. As the electric sheep bleat and we transfer our faces and figures to the fictitious Facebook forums, I’ll be whistling my own merry tune as I walk in the cool night air to find the last bastions of human resistance: a party. See you Cyberbodies around, I hope.

Chris is a level 40 bachelor on a number of dating websites. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.