It's a Small Web After All
I probably couldn't find a more "done to death"
topic of discussion than the effect the Internet
has had of making the world smaller. But it is a
really cool phenomenon, one which I discover anew
on a regular basis. Take, for instance, the
regularity with which I seem to connect with old
friends via the Internet. Just last week, an old
high school chum contacted me out of the blue. I
probably haven't seen him for ten years or more,
but in the past few days we've exchanged e-mails
like it's only been ten weeks. A few months ago, an
old Navy buddy tracked me down through the popular
Classmates.com Web site. And last year, I hooked up
with my oldest friend of all by e-mail. (When I say
"oldest," I don't refer to her age, but rather how
long we've been acquainted.) I've known her since I
was two—virtually my entire life,
therefore—so it was great to see her and
reestablish our friendship.
In 1998, I got in touch with an old friend with
whom I had traveled to Honduras as a foreign
exchange student way back in 1983 (and whom I have
not seen since then). Together, we worked via
e-mail (and by snail mail when that failed) to
track down the other 15 students we traveled with.
I even built a Web site where we could post our
current photos and news of the previous 15 years.
We ended up only finding about two-thirds of them,
but it was exciting nonetheless. Perhaps the most
bizarre story came when one of our fellow travelers
e-mailed me from Sweden, saying he had received the
postcard I sent to his circa-1983 home address. He
had moved many years ago, but somehow his postman
found him. I guess the U.S. Postal Service could
learn a thing or two from the Swedes.
I've certainly used the Internet more than once
to connect with people I've never met as well. Back
in prehistoric 1995, when the Web was still a new
phenomenon even to me, I quickly became a chat room
junkie. At that time, AOL still charged by the
hour; don't even ask me how much my monthly bills
were. One of the first people I met in a chat room
back then has been an online "buddy" ever since.
Besides being a fun person to talk to, she has also
helped my career from time to time. I owe at least
one freelance writing assignment to her
assistance.
Around the same time, I cultivated another
online friendship. Though this person and I have
stayed in touch ever since, and have shared the
most intimate details of our personal lives with
one another, we have to this day never met in
person. Through the magic of the Internet, two
people who have never seen each other, talking
between Fort Wayne and San Diego, can be as close
as if they were chatting over the backyard
fence.
Perhaps most significantly, I met my
ex-fiancée, with whom I spent six years of
my life, by a chance encounter in yet another chat
room on America Online. We began conversing, and
before long discovered we had a lot in common. Our
first "in the flesh" meeting came about for
business reasons, but after I had done some work
for her, we hit it off and began dating. The rest
is now (literally, I guess) history.
I now exude Internet savvy. I can find a piece
of obscure trivia via Google quicker than I can
locate my car keys. My friends find it easier to
reach me via e-mail than by phone. However, the
power of the World Wide Web to make our wide world
small continues to amaze me, veteran though I may
be. We truly live in revolutionary times. Decades
from now, people will look back on this time as we
look back on the Industrial Revolution. I feel
lucky to be a part of it.
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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