Genesis - On Connections

It begins with a point.

By itself it is completely and utterly dull. Get a bunch of points and draw imaginary lines in between and now you're getting somewhere.

There is something to be said about connections and the way they influence the universe. They can hold extreme power over us, but at the same time they are the most fragile things: created and destroyed on a whim. We all deal with connections in our daily slog: physical, logical, spiritual, temporal. And as we navigate this web of the tangible and the non, we seldom think about the consequences of the connections that we make and break every instant of our existence. Nor do we really examine whether all these connections that we make are improving our lives or are corrupting our very existence.

I am an engineer. I write software. I begin with an idea and I break it up into pieces that are interconnected by logic and a stated purpose. When connected, these conceptual entities combine to bring the idea to life. I transform these pieces into instructions that can be understood by a machine and that are connected by the concepts of logic and flow. The instructions grind down to electrical pulses that race between pieces of silicon connected by wires only a handful of atoms in width. In the end, the tiny, racing electrons that I have sent on their journey run through LCD monitors, WAN routers, keyboards, etc all in the hopes of establishing connections that are meaningful to us: an e-mail to a potential employer, a picture sent to a secret crush, a video of a friend who is on the other side of the globe. It is an orchestra that I've helped to compose and leave to you to conduct.

Connections do not exist solely in the physical realm, they permeate the realm of our own conscious and subconscious. What does it mean if two people "don't connect?" As if they were puzzle pieces that have since gotten too bent and damaged to be snapped together. How are these metaphysical connections established, maintained, and tested? With the myriad of ways for us to connect, the complexity of keeping track of these links seems to increase exponentially. It seems as if this fact would cheapen the connections we experience with people and things. However, I believe that it enables us (those who are still able) to place a higher value on the very few connections we have that are truly important to us. With a 1,000 friends on your Facebook, do you feel that much closer to the ones you knew since you were growing up? After days of instant and text messages exchanged with your love, does a simple hug, the feeling of flesh on flesh feel that much more profound?

This post began with a point, but doesn't seem to end with one. At least not yet. The theme of this blog will be "connections" and how the things that happen around us help us create new ones, improve the ones we already have, or realize that it all doesn't really matter in the end. Since I am a tech geek it will all somehow revolve around or relate back to technology. But I will, from time to time, elevate the discussion to a more cerebral level. This will help in my frustrated efforts to put my thoughts down on... paper? Because somewhere within me there is a writer eager to break out of his cage of laziness and procrastination. In any case, the goal will be to try to point out connections where none seem to exist and that is what I will try to do in future posts.

"The only person who can live apart from others is a Sage or an idiot."
- Plato