It’s not a small world after all

It’s not a small world after all

Like nodes of many kinds, people have a tendency to cluster together. Why? Jobs, food, shelter, safety, and the comfort of human companionship.

But what about technology? We think technology makes the world a small place, and it does on some level because it allows us to connect to anyone in the world, right? Yes, you can make calls to remote places or share ideas on the Internet with people in other countries. Yes, yes, yes. But overall you cannot reach everyone everywhere by far. I call BS on the whole thing.

Coming in over Long Island, you can trace every major roadway. (Photo Courtesy of Laura Leudesdorff-DeLuca)

Did you ever look at a light pollution map? More than half the land mass of the world is blacked out. If you fly over east of the Mississippi, the place it lit up like a Christmas tree. I can even see from the air the major roadways that lead to my house while coming in at JFK. Fly over China and it’s dark in so many places.

But light pollution is not the only map that looks like this. So does cell phone coverage. Now stack those maps on top of a population density and you start getting a really good picture of how the world is “wired” to say the least. And where the technology, including communication, really spans. We tend to even forget about the power we need to run everything.

So why do we try to kid ourselves the world is such a small place? Yes, James Cameron can tweet he saw some shrimp at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but that doesn’t really apply to people in some of the remote parts of Africa or Latin America, does it? Personally, this traveler has been in a few places in the last few years where Internet access or cell service was nonexistent to limited, at best. But I think we fool ourselves into believing the hype the world is such a small place. Maybe I should just blame Disney and the “It’s a Small World After All” stuff for my childhood misconception.

Bryan DeLuca

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