I've taken delivery of a Blackberry so that I can not only do my email out and about but also Twitter ... suddenly the world has become a much smaller place as I swap tweats and follow tweats all around the world!
The world is a much smaller place than once it was and I never cease to wonder - particularly when visiting the United States and Australia - how lonely and vast it must have appeared to the early pioneers from Europe who set out to explore those two vast landscapes. Today of course we just jump back in the car, pull out a mobile telephone or twitter on a Blackberry and the world wraps its self around us.
When I was doing my national service as a signalman in the army I was always fascinated by radio communication across the world and would spend many hours in the solitude of the operations room before dawn listening to radio hams chatting to each other - usually on the other side of the world - and wishing that I could take part in their exchanges. Not even in my wildest dreams did I think that something like the World Wide Web, Chat Rooms or Twitter would be not just a reality but the norm within my lifetime. We all have access and this is being spread across the four corners of the world!
This speed of communication is a phenomenally powerful tool that could be bringing people and ideas together but sadly it brings also increased conflict. Religion, political and economic power or influence ... the list goes on. What will it take, I wonder, for us to use such power constructively to save our peoples, our resources and our world?
