The Human Baton

Okay, this is cool.

A recent Sunday comes and Cherish Pageau (Internet handle: gifa) is so amped up with anticipation she hops out of bed early.

In only a few hours the 30-year-old redhaired Kansas City, Mo., production artist for Hallmark, will be the 12th relay driver in what began as a wacky winter-break college adventure but has since turned into, well, a sorta semi quasi half serious Internet experiment of national scope:

The trek of the "Human Baton."

The experiment:

Take one college student -- shy 22-year-old Luke Vaughn of the University of Oregon, who, while chatting on an Internet forum at zefrank.com, asks whether he should drive or fly home to California. Instead, a plan is hatched to pass him like a human baton, car by car, Internet stranger by Internet stranger, not only to California but also cross-country to New York and back to Oregon by the start of classes Jan. 8. It's the ultimate college road trip.

The serious part: For almost 300 Internet faithful who have signed on as relay drivers, it's to show that the Internet is not some spooky, dangerous place populated by lurking pedophiles, frauds, e-mail scammers and identity thieves -- OK, maybe it is sometimes -- but it's also a friendly "community," they say.

"This is kind of a proof of concept," Pageau says. "There's a lot of trust involved. I want it to be successful."

I hope you're successful, too, but I didn't think the matter of the Internet being more than just a den of iniquity was an open question. Be that as it may, I love stuff like this. It took awhile to load on my computer, but you can see a Google map of his route hereand a bunch of pictures from the road here. Have a good trip, dude.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on January 03, 2007 to Society and cultcha | TrackBack