The author has been a witness to the birth of the personal computer culture, with its intense one-on-one relationships with machines, and then to the development of the networked culture, with people using the computer to communicate with each other. In her most recent work on the revolutions in social networking and sociable robotics, she sees a world of new possibilities as well as perils. Technology is the architect of people's intimacies, but this means that as they text, Twitter, e-mail, and spend time on Facebook, technology is not just doing things for people, but to them, changing the way they view themselves and their relationships. In this article, the author reflects on how technology reinvents intimacy and solitude. (Contains 24 endnotes.)