The almighty Internet

Internet, at its best, connects people all over the world. Blogs from Iraqis detailing their lives when the US invaded them, etc, etc.

But what happens when it hits nearer to home? Jon’s recent blog post on 24th December 2004 detailed about long-lost siblings reunited once again when the brother searched for his sister’s name via search engines and found her name in a NZ school website, something about her winning something.

The sister returned to Malaysia for a short holiday just to meet up with the brother (there are complicated issues which are hard to mention - but simply put, their parents divorced, and one follows the other). And they were reunited, even if it’s just a day.

A friend/acquaintance who’s one year younger than me recently went to Ireland to pursue his studies. I thought all contact would be lost (since I thought he didn’t really have Internet access at home, therefore he wouldn’t have an e-mail etc) - and lo behold, he found me on Friendster yesterday (something that I don’t really like to use previously ‘cause I thought the site’s a little cheesy).

Apparently, he had to browse through over 1000 users’ profiles just to find a few of us that he knew. And he’s thousands of miles away at Ireland, the land of the Corrs and Carlsberg.

Internet has been condemned here and then, because of the variety of ways people could misuse it - porn, illegal hacks/warez, etc - but sometimes with incidents like this, people have to know that the Internet has its own good - it connects people!

I’m in awe of the Internet.