Subscribe

Globalization

Posted by Garth on Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Sometimes I'm in awe of the world around me.

Tonight I was hanging out at Dos, ready to go out with Chanisa, Simon, and his girlfriend Sara (her Thai nickname is Meow or Miow or something that sounds like a cat and means "cat").  Mike called me.  He wanted to ask me a technical question about supporting users in Toronto.  He's in Morocco.  I'm in Thailand.  I told him to send me an email with the details and I'd have an answer for him (or my best attempt) before the next working day (where his users are)... 24 hours from the time of the call (since 10pm here is 10am in Toronto).  Isn't that crazy?!?!  I'm literally 12 hours difference from his users, and he's about 5 hours... and yet we're able to coordinate and collaborate.  At the cost of a 5 min phone call (probably using VoIP so uber cheap) and a bit of email exchange.

Mankind has been around for a few MILLION years.  We invented the radio about 100 years ago.  The Internet has been around for about 20 years.  And today, I'm able to do the above without blinking an eye.  Oh, and he didn't call me on some sort of antiquated "land-line".  He called me on my mobile phone.  Which resides in my pocket and which is basically a personal communication device that I can talk to anyone on the planet with.

Wow!  I'm sure every generation says this, but I'm glad to be living now and not a thousand years ago (though if I had to choose any other time in history, I'd probably choose the Wild West of the early 20th century and have been shot to death by the time I was 22... but as they said in Hammy Hamster, "that's another story").

3 comments:

Michael said...

Yeah I feel the same way about this type of stuff. Timezones are enough to screw with your mind completely, especially when dealing with a client back home and talking with a friend in Thailand at the same time. My experiment of supporting from a far has been mostly successful, and as you said - the cost of communications it stupidly cheap. With the ineternets the way they are, it is a good time to be alive me thinks. I am concerned about my friends kids though.

This conversation was a little bit depressing to me though. I am in a dingy Internet cafe, fighting the eccentricities of "User group policy loopback processing mode" while you are hanging out with your girlfriend and friends in YOUR bar.

That aint right.

Michael said...

And then I will learn to write good and type and stuff like that.

Garth said...

Your follow-up made me LOL (man, I hate using that acronym for some reason).

At any rate, I don't know who's really got it better. You're vagabonding and still making money, and I'm ass-planted and losing money.

On a totally separate note, you MUST watch The Art of Travel. The whole movie made me think of you (and made me a little envious of your attitude/outlook as well). Anyway, a must-watch for you Mike.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448993/

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)