INTERNET AND THE ON LINE WORLD
Today was for me a tech day. Before going to Germany I finally cancelled Spectrum TV because I was paying for it even when I was abroad and they wouldn’t let me suspend my internet connection when I was gone. Then when I returned with the Vision Pro I needed steady fast internet. T-Mobile wouldn’t take me back because they said too many people in my area were signed up for wireless internet. So I tried using my Solis hotspot which is guaranteed to give me the fastest available internet anywhere in the world. But it gave me only very slow internet in Swannanoa and the 20GB for $50 drained away quickly, like water in a sieve, so I had to carefully ration it. Finally I went back to Spectrum again, $60 for unlimited 1GB a second, internet. But I discovered that I had to buy a $109 router in order to connect and then, even with the very friendly help of a young woman in the Philippines at midnight her time it was difficult to connect my new router. Finally I connected.
I don’t know what the moral of this story is but it is part of living in a virtual world that is totally interconnected. Nothing is anywhere. It is there wherever I travel.
In contrast, wherever I go, reality on the ground is different. In country after country defenders of one identity or another are drawing lines around their country and trying to keep other people out or are fighting over territory. This is happening at the same time as technology has erased boundaries and made all this parochialism unreal.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 