On Human Connection

The discussion with J. started as always very inconspicuously. We were trifling with the notion that in modern societies the Internet has become an extension of our mental existence. We resort more and more to the vast amounts of data that reside in the web and the powerful search engines to complement the limited ability of our brains to register and retrieve facts. Whether it's about finding the appropriate word for our sentences or that term we have on the tip of our tongue we find much preferable the physical effort of typing one or multiple queries to the mental effort of memory retrieval. And why strain one's hippocampus over storing non-essential data when the unfathomable pool of knowledge is just one mouse click away? What is more a large portion of the everyday stimuli that eventually end up in our brains, from music and videos to news articles are channelled through the web.
But isn't it true that factual memory is intimately connected to conscience both as a causal antecedent and in terms of anatomical occupancy? Surely, one might think, this common, accessible source of knowledge and culture brings us closer to a universal conscience, to a global brotherhood. This is however just an illusion. Our ability to connect with fellow human beings does not depend on the data in hand or even our efficiency in processing and assimilating them. Human connection goes many levels deeper. Is that true even in cases where the medium is controlled and composted to uniformity by oppressive rulers (see China) or cultural and ideological quasi-Monopolies (see most Western societies)? I would argue that by infusing their message the censors can go only as far as to align the otherwise haphazard soulless bodies of their societies. People with the ability for true human connection cannot be manufactured or discouraged by the quality of the message. And this is exactly why these people are as rare in the most oppressive societies as in the most open ones. Common stimuli do not warrant connection of souls just like lack thereof does not prevent it.