Click on a link to discover the ties that bind. In many respects, the Internet simply shows us a model of the myriad contacts and contexts we already inhabit as social creatures. Of course it also augments those contacts and contexts, and when a difference in degree becomes large enough it may become a difference in kind. Still, when I surf the web I don’t feel as if I’m interacting with machines. I feel as if I’m meeting minds, and hearts, and perhaps even souls. Not always, but often enough to keep me hooked.

Three quick examples from an uneven but rewarding day:

1. This essay from Slate is about intelligence in the deepest sense: it explores the way we know when we know together. That collaboration honors and answers identity; it does not fragment or dilute it. We are never more ourselves than when we’re with others. When we explore links, we map experience–and in this case, we map identities as well. The essay’s most riveting moment for me concerns an attempt to retrieve passwords that went with their holders to the grave. I can’t say more without spoiling the experience for you, but there are great mysteries here, and an oddly effective consolation, too.

2. The opening essay in Lisa Ames’ blog “Learning to Sail” links books, mouse-clicks, sailboats, and families. Blogging is like sailing, but it may also be like sailing with, or to, family. A brief, poignant story that works on many levels.

3. “Sonata for the Unaware” is an uncanny synthesis of purpose and coincidence, so uncanny that both purpose and coincidence are called into question. And you can dance to it, but slowly and gracefully.

Poetry, people; poetry.