January 9, 2008

I spent this morning using the extranet tubes. Long aluminum tubes that move a certain amount of discreet information from one physical location to another. In my case; from Noded South to Noded North. I sometimes have a hard time with the dichotomy we have created with our global avatarial presence and our sadly regional physical mass.

In the global we converse, twitter, seesmic, without effort or boundaries. Talking with someone waking up in Shanghai as we are getting ready for bed in Chicago. Catching up with UK twitters who have a 6 hour head start on the day. In the regional we spend long hours moving ourselves from one place to another out of contact with just about the whole human race. Shoehorned into a regional jet with 70 other people today I had zero conversations, no real contact except for the fact that the guy sitting next to me was close to 6 foot 4 and the aircraft manufactures clearly did not consult with him about size requirements. We flew with the center armrest up so that he could have just a little bit more room. I hope he appreciated the extra space. We never spoke.