Transcending Usefulness, Creating Magic

In case anyone missed it, we got engaged today. In our own excitement, we enthusiastically posted a photo so we could share our joy with friends who, due to geographic distance, we can't simply invite out for celebratory drinks and revelry. Over the years, I've come to look on this kind of thing as a useful function of the Internet. In college, I kept a blog so that my family and friends back home could easily keep up with my goings on without feeling pressured to call or write emails. And now I (and many, many others) use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to essentially keep a running log of moments, both important and fleeting, to share not only with my friends, but with myself later. The Internet has become our scrapbook, our photo album, our journal.

It's all incredibly useful. But sometimes, like today, it goes beyond just useful and becomes magical.

Enter Facebook Timeline. Minutes after posting the photo, I started getting notifications in my feed that people were Liking and Commenting on the photo. After clicking through, I realized I could sit on that photo's page and watch those Comments and Likes come through in real time. I know it seems small, but the fact that I could see my friends and family react instantly without refreshing the page felt a lot like magic. It felt like I was on a long distance conference call with everyone instead of a message thread. Suddenly, the distances between all of us disappeared and we were all in the same room, sharing in this moment together.

I've always been happy to live in a time when the Internet exists. Today, though, I was grateful.

Thank you to all the builders. All the hackers. All the designers. The world is a smaller place because of you and that's a very, very good thing.