The story of Ivanna’s lost phone in Ch. 1’s Here Comes Everybody can be compared to so many other stories that resulted from the collaborative effort from those with a shared experience in this decade. What began as a common story of a phone getting lost in a cab, resulted in a homemade detective pursuit among a large group of people previously unknown to Ivanna and led to the recovery of her phone and an experience. This story framed the future of collaboration.

To Write Love on Her Arms would be one of those stories. TWLOHA is a movement about reaching out to others that started on the Internet. They began with a simple myspace blog that generated stories from teens from all over the world about dealing with depression and substance abuse. With these stories came the heartfelt thankyous to the site’s creator for giving them a place where they didn’t feel alone.
In stories like Ivanna’s TWLOHA and many others there’s a declaration of the phrase ‘power in numbers.’ None of these events could have taken place if there wasn’t a way to connect to so many outside of our zip code simultaneously. At all other times in history we were limited to location. Today, our world can be as big as the world itself and what that can accomplish is mind blowing.

Even in the simple stories I’ve recounted these collaborative movements left considerable impacts on individual lives: these people were understood. These people not only had someone to listen, but they also had support. They received help from others in way they could never accomplish alone. When you can have a large group of people come together with a mutual understanding, change can occur. It can occur anywhere in the world, at any time, by anyone. This is the power of connectivity. This is the power of understading.

"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." - Ryunosuke Satoro