small world

I'm not sure how accurate this video is in terms of the number of flights crisscrossing the globe over a 24 hour period, but I found myself playing over about five times just watching the little dots move around. On one hand I thought about how much we (especially in the States) may take air travel for granted, and on the other I wondered how increased technology has made this world so much smaller in my lifetime.

I remember as a kid all the phone calls 'back home' were done after everyone was supposed to be asleep, and how it didn't always occur to me that it's always daytime somewhere. Any calls coming to us were likewise late and always collect. There was always a delay of a few seconds or more as you'd hear your own voice bounce back before hearing the response, and my normally soft spoken mother would all of a sudden be screaming into the phone (but strangely not in that same angry way that she always yelled at me).

Eventually my folks would stop worrying what the hit would be on the next phone bill because there were these phone card things where you just scratched off a number and everyone would be talking for hours instead of minutes. Now, well we've got the internet and you may as well just turn the cam on so your fam halfway around the world can see a slightly delayed you for just pennies.

I worry alot about the kind of world the kids now are going to have to deal with as they get older. Sometimes though, when I look at how far we've come in my lifetime I hope that when they look back they see as much forward progress as I do.