A LINKEDIN invitation was recently sent out from me to my mother. This disturbed me for two reasons. First, I hadn’t meant to send it to her at all. How superficial can you be, sending a social networking invitation via e-mail to your very own mother that coldly notes, “Building these connections can create opportunities in the future.” Besides, far from having opportunities, or a knowable future, my mother died more than three years ago.

Sending out the invitation was an accident, you see, a great big techno-blunder, the result of mental diffusion and attrition. For months, I had been worn down by one LinkedIn pitch after another. Trying to be polite to whoever was doing the inviting, I at first attempted to accept, but accepting entailed joining LinkedIn, so I ended up deleting, somewhat guiltily, the solicitations as they arrived.

Then came that special day. In a haze of absent-mindedness, I received an invitation from someone with whom I had been wanting to renew an acquaintance. I clicked on accept. I was redirected to a registration page. After filling in the fields marked as required for instant human linkage, I found myself staring at photographs of four people, all known to me, and being asked to attempt to connect with one or more of them. I was also offered — this should have been accompanied by the soundtrack to the shower scene in “Psycho” — the opportunity to click on a tab innocently designated as “select all.”

Now, like a child absorbing the warning never to talk to strangers, I had assimilated the familiar admonition never to click on the “reply all” tab on my e-mail screen before undergoing days of reflection, introspection and legal consultation. However, although my information-laden cerebellum had at last registered “reply all” in its avoidance file, the antediluvian underside of my brain apparently saw no point in cross-referencing “reply all” with “select all.” Entering the functional sleepwalking segment of my afternoon, relieved on some level to be surrendering to the status quo, happy finally to oblige, I steered my cursor into the heart of the new tab in my life and wearily clicked.