Haha, he said "touching!"

"That's what she said!" I love The Office!

Over the course of this blog, especially the last post, I've brought up the benefits of amassing a capacity for (the) human experience. Indeed, this is something people have been doing as long as we can remember, beyond even the first folk songs before the emergence of writing. Emotions are powerful, and often we use this fact to our advantage, for better or worse. We laugh at physical comedy, cry at melodramatic pain, and avert our eyes from the played-out joke of horribly "white" folks trying to beatbox and rap, only to fail miserably. But what makes us spread all of our wonderful and horrible experiences, stories, and opinions to others? What makes us reach out and touch people?

Inappropriate comments aside, the first thing I think of is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Which is fine. Though, one dimension I'd like to explore is that of anonymity. Actually, I think I'll prefer remoteness; no one's really anonymous on the web, even though we like to think we are. (Admittedly, that may be a touch of paranoia talking, but the fact remains.)

On the web, we scour and search for information, or what we think is information, and we're surrounding by a gigantic forum of people's work. I think it's true, you don't need to write to become a better writer, but you need to read. And, even with YouTube, Google's Image search, and Opera's text-to-speech capabilities, the web is predominantly a written medium. As we learn to scour and tunnel our way through the web, we pick up on others expressing themselves, process and analyze that, and continue on. As the cliché of the "information superhighway" beckons to us, we forget the more important part: a human touch. For worse, it's that the "information" we pick up isn't fact-based, but opinion-based. Often, it's the voice of those who have no basis for what they say. Young students writing papers know the story; you can't take what you read on the internet for granted. Who knows who said it, and how can you prove someone is who they claim to be? And yet, at best, it's the place we turn to for advice from real people who, despite never seeing the face of (at least in person), we can still trust.

My thoughts turn to motive. Tons of people go out on the web and voice their opinion, share their knowledge, and try to give someone else the benefit of their experience. Somehow, though, it's profoundly different from the way it's been done before. It's one thing to focus on the fact that you don't need to ever be in the same room with someone who's giving you advice. It's quite another to remember that you don't have to know them at all (aside from their writing, videos, or podcasts) to gain from their experience. It's not so much anonymity because you have some way of interacting with them. It's the remoteness that needs to be treasured. Not just the physical remoteness, either - that's not a novetly anymore - but it's the emotional aspect of it. We don't know anything about the other person aside from that which he or she discloses to us. (Our view is then necessarily biased by the author - think about that.)

We turn to our screens and keyboards (I, myself, don't like mouses - or is it really mice - much) and offer to others a little window into our personal lives. We hope to try to sway others into our lines of thought, hopefully to their benefit. We try to touch the life of someone else, however far-removed they may be from our own lives, with much success. And we do it without being asked. That's the really important part, I think. In the vast depths of internet, there's always someone out there who will find value in something posted. Unasked for but not unwanted.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's interesting to see things like the web-bot project (go ahead, google it, and have fun sifting through tons of info) pop up. Essentially, it scours the web and makes predictions based on linguistic analysis of data returned. I saw it on the History Channel, on an episode of "Decoding the Past" (I think). Along the same lines, there's the idea of the web as a physical manifestation of Jung's collective unconscious. Food for thought, even if it is all mumbo-jumbo. Of course, one of the problems with both of these ideas is that there's a significant portion of the world's population that is not linked to the web.

As our technology permits us further freedom, we use that freedom not just for our own benefits, but for the benefits of others. It's a tool to build some of our own altruism. Flame wars rage because people forget that there's an actual human being on the other end of these "intertubes" (how I wish I could find the appropriate xkcd comic), and simultaneously weblogs and podcasts are downloaded constantly because people remember that there are other people out there.

Whatever it is inside us that causes us, motivates us to share what we know, it's a treasure. Another imporant note is that knowledge isn't very useful unless it's applied. And, that, my friends, is the fact that will be our Phlegyas. It pushes us deeper into the realm of bettering ourselves, the realm of experience and knowledge, the realm of reaching out and touching the life of someone. You can't escape it. And why would you want to? This is one of the most direct ways we can improve the quality of life for other people, and the people we care about around us. Perhaps, most importantly, it lets us connect with those who we've never met, will never meet, barely know, and yet, still have some sort of connection with.

A final thought: "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you!"