Information will be available at lightning speed, across the world, at the touch of a button. Obsolescence will be, if it's not too paradoxical, obsolete. New information will supersede old information quickly, easily, and uniformly. The equal access of the internet will mean that the people farthest from the centers of distribution will finally have news, statistics, and teaching materials that are as up-to-date as any that can be had in the urban centers. And vice versa -- critical information generated in outlying areas will no longer wait, by virtue of its geographical remoteness, to catch the attention of the rest of the world.
Look! You can see it in action around you, today! You, over there in Jamalpur. You, in Istanbul. (Did you know that there is a city in Turkey called Batman?) You, in Harari, Milwaukee, Pernambuco, Jyvaskyla -- you can all read the same information right now. You are far away from one another, but you can look across all that distance. You have this in common.
You can all look at pictures of cats sitting in sinks. It brings a tear to my eye.
Posted by dianna at July 17, 2007 07:50 PM