An interesting article appeared in the newspaper La Nación about the need for users to have internet connections (See note).
The article suggests a trend of connecting more and more devices to this supernetwork. From laptops and cell phones to electronic organizers, everything is interconnected.
As the Baal Shem Tov used to say, one should learn something from everything one hears or sees in service to God. The idea behind this is that there are no coincidences in the universe. Every occurrence has a reason for being, as our sages say, that God did not create a single thing in vain. Everything has a purpose. Not only do created creatures and objects have fundamental importance, but societal circumstances and trends also have a purpose and teach us things. Sometimes one learns what things to avoid, and sometimes one learns how to utilize a new technology for the service of God.
From this interconnection we can learn several things:
1. Clearly, the world's trend is toward interconnecting every aspect of human life to this famous Web. One of the fundamental tenets of Judaism is that everything one does, says, or thinks in life must be connected to God in some way. Sometimes the connection is that one acts for a certain Divine purpose (such as working to give Tzedakah—charity), but the work itself is worldly. In other cases, the connection is established because the act itself is Divine, not merely for the sake of something Divine, such as eating on Shabbat (which is a mitzvah).
The teaching is clear: the world tends towards total interconnection, something that Judaism has been preaching for thousands of years, that one must be hyperconnected to God in all one's steps.
2. There is an impressive advantage to being hyperconnected. If you search the internet for the word Torah, Google will return 10,300,000 results in 0.22 seconds, while Yahoo! returns 300,000 in 0.21 seconds. Imagine traveling by car, connecting your cell phone to the internet, and after a quick search, starting to listen to a Torah lesson over the loudspeaker... or traveling by train with an electronic calendar, connecting to the internet, and reading the weekly Torah reading...
And if someone says and thinks they are not ready for such technological advances... the truth is that, thank God, every day there are more books and texts in countless languages accessible to everyone, even the most ignorant.
It's just a matter of wanting to be connected... with God.