Ignore (and please forgive) the slightly dubious titling of this post, because I really meant it in the nicest most sincere way possible! With Steve Jobs’ death and everything this past week I think everyone’s been thinking about how he’s changed not just Apple and their products but the way people relate to their gadgets and as a result, how we communicate to one another. (Cue in Apple’s latest promotional video for the iPhone 4S Siri voice recognition feature)

It really got me thinking about my own relationship with people and the internet, and the relationships that have sprung from the internet or have been aided so much by it that there would have been no relationship at all if it hadn’t existed. So here are a few people that I’ve gotten to know over the internet.

I met Travis in Bali in the summer of 2006 when I had just finished high school in Jakarta. I think we only saw each other like twice during that holiday but we ended up being such good pen pals over the years, recycling many envelopes and using up a lot of bandwidth. We oversaw the Facebook takeover from Myspace (although I believe he is still a Myspace loyalist at heart), exchanged art and music and met face to face probably once every 2 years either back in Bali or that one time I went to Melbourne to visit another friend. I think 30% of my music downloads have been influenced by this person and it’s weird to think what that 30% would have been otherwise if I hadn’t met him!

Travis is an amazing illustrator, graphic designer and multimedia artist.

And then I got to know Alexis, who is friends with Travis, through a melange of online social networking systems. We never actually met in person, but I had always admired her killer illustrations and photography. There are only so many ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ you can do before you think “I probably should just tell this person directly how cool I think she is before she decides that I’m a total weirdo”. I remember telling her this over a blogspot comment (now she’s on Tumblr of course) and since then we’ve been officially friends on Facebook. She is coming over to the UK in December so we’re organizing a meet and an art-swap. Isn’t it funny?

I only got really into Twitter this year and I’ve since ‘met’ a lot of really interesting personalities on there. To name but a few, Kate Pickering of @vanillainkUK who is also a jewellery designer and founder of Vanilla Ink studios. I admire her work and her way of bringing designers together in a much needed platform.

Just yesterday, I discovered @ForensicJewelry via Twitter. It’s a new research project investigating jewellery as a method of forensic identification in Policing, Law Enforcement & Disaster Victim Identification! Doesn’t that sound amazing? Being a bit of a hardcore Dexter fan (so over CSI) I was thrilled to find this and can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Last but not least, I recently got a lovely email from a designer who said she really enjoyed seeing my work on Klimt02. As it turns out she is half-Indonesian! We ended up exchanging emails about our current projects and talking about what a pity it is that we don’t see that many Indonesian contemporary jewellers. These kinds of conversations wouldn’t have happened if the two of us hadn’t been on Klimt02.