Every Human Emotion by Diane Smith  | producer of  Birklea How else can you get completely absorbed into someone's life, and yet, have never met them? It is an opportunity to penetrate geographical barriers and experience people and cultures otherwise closed off from you. While I understand (and appreciate) the huge wave of trendy dot coms with e-commerce at the forefront, I hold onto the heart of the web - people - personal homepages. There is nothing like surfin' around people's lives. I am truly astonished how many people bare their souls through their homepages. So many have been able to creatively express themselves and tap into perhaps unknown talent/skills. Writing, art, design, journalling and poetry are among several creative ways people have been able to make their mark on the web. I have witnessed so much humility from these people, in that they don't recognise themselves as talented or as artists but wishing to express themselves and discovering a wonderful medium in which to do so. On a personal level, it is the ability to make new friends that has impacted my life on many levels over the past four years or so from being online - specifically on the web. I have made a handful of very special friends as well as partaking in a wider network of web based groups. I don't understand why these people are so important in my life but they are. I think, no, I believe that online friendships are completely unique. Is it because there are no barriers to get over? You don't have pre-concieved ideas of a person. You can't judge them from their looks - chances are you won't see a photo until after the relationship has begun - is that why these relationships are so special? These relationships seem to build quite quickly and have a deep and meaningful interaction long before they would under normal *real life* situations for making friends. No, I am not a lonely pathetic geek who spends all her life online and has to choose online friends to survive. Nope, I am a happily married woman with four teenagers and a wide circle of friends and close to my family. But even if I was lonely and had 2 heads and no chance of ever making friends in r/l, doesn't that prove my point of the web being an arena in which barriers of geography, sex, race, religion and age are completely broken through? For me, webspeaking, it is a major part of my life - I feel a connection through my website and through the sites I visit. Apart from the obvious connection ;) it is often emotional, intellectual and/or spiritual. I would guess, that I have experienced every human emotion as a result of the web :) Good and bad...! Copyright 2000 © Diane Smith 11/23/00