The Ties That Bind

Today is the 25^th anniversary of the World Wide Web, and it actually has someone credited with inventing it: Sir Tim Bemers-Lee, who is also credited with creating the first software to browse it with. I swear, I thought the Web was older than that (and I know there’s a difference of some kind between the WWW and the Internet, but don’t ask me to explain it). And where exactly does Al Gore fit in?

I had always been of the opinion, perhaps since childhood, that human beings have this irresistible drive to be connected, and that wireless communication made life dramatically easier. Via amateur radio, I was able to talk to folks all over the world, but there were so many low-level practical uses. Example: two hams could agree to meet for coffee. If one were late, he could let the other know by radio; if he got lost, the other could “talk him in.” Decades before cell phones.

For journalists, Web connectedness is, of course, indispensable. It wasn’t all that long ago that when there was an earthquake in Southern California, where I lived, I had the devil of a time getting a magnitude and location on it. I had to rush to the newsroom and call Cal Tech and hope there was somebody there who could read the meters and talk to me – and if it were early in the morning, the on-duty seismology tech usually wasn’t in an accommodating mood. Eventually, our local emergency manager got a pager that would display the Richter scale reading and the location automatically. I wanted one. He told me it cost $25,000. These days, I get alerted to big earthquakes all over the world, by email, for free (beyond the cost of the Internet connection).

A retired newsman I know recently visited Myanmar (Burma), and was able to send those of us on his friend list real-time photos of that beautiful country. He reminded me that it wasn’t all that long ago that war correspondents in Southeast Asia risked their necks just to get a few feet of battle film transported to a place where the major TV networks had access to it.

We all know how social media have changed relationships. There’s the old joke about two Facebook friends meeting for lunch and being bored to death -- so up-to-date on each others’ lives that they had nothing to say.

Perhaps that shows how this lovely connectedness has an invisible price. We can add all the wires, towers, satellites and bandwidth we want to make connections more and more real, but in the end, we have to accept that it’s all artificial tethering, and while incredibly useful, is only a substitute for real human contact.

Maybe it’s like this: Did you ever visit a place of great beauty with your camera, and were so concerned about getting pictures of it that you neglected to actually experience it? I’ve often thought that sometimes, you have to go back to the place  – without your camera -- just to soak it in.

But look, I’m not talking about unplugging here, not by a long shot, just recognizing that we have a constant challenge before us: putting all this electronic interaction in its place, and remembering that it’s part of life, not a substitute for it.

Life-changing Toys

I’m much too old to be getting toys for Christmas, but I got a terrific one this year (or should I say last?) from Santa: an Internet radio.

Now I think this is way cool, though geeks would probably call it primitive. With this device you can hear audio streams without a computer. Thousands of radio stations in the U.S. and around the world put their live audio on their Web sites, and the Internet radio allows you to search for your favorites and set them up on pushbuttons, just like a car radio. If there’s breaking news in a particular city, you can “tune” in a station there and hear how the locals cover it. The really interesting part is listening to the same stations that local listeners hear, not available on short wave. I can listen to the radio station where I used to work in a distant city. To expand horizons a little, I have taken to listening to a newscast on Jamaica’s Nationwide News Network. Just hearing the accents makes me warm – it was about 82 degrees there the other day. In addition to that, the country’s prime minister recently announced all kinds of tax breaks for businesses and individuals, if I heard the story correctly. Maybe that makes you feel warm.

Sure, you can find all this stuff on your laptop, but I’m old enough to want to work with a box with a speaker and knobs on it. Another nice part is that no keyboard is required. So much enjoyable software involves having to use a mouse and a keyboard, so it feels like you never leave the office. The Internet radio involves new technology installed in an old, familiar package. I recall someone saying that the only reason we have been using CDs and DVDs is that they are discs with holes in the middle, just like the old vinyl records, and that the disc design was the only way to make a successful transition from the old to the new.

This could all get me started on why we need radio and TV stations with expensive transmitters consuming power and radiating energy, or why we need an FCC to license and regulate them, since the ability to “broadcast” is no longer a limited resource. But we’re barely into the New Year, and I wanted to put off the axe-grinding till at least the next post.

There, now I’ve said it.