Globe Trotting: The Virtual Way

Several technologies have conspired to make our world seems smaller. One is the advent of air travel, which really took off after the invention of the jet engine. Then there is the ubiquitous telephone where voices are transmitted through great distances. This was followed by the television, enabling both sound and sight to be beamed to every corner of the world instantly.

However, the technology that has really shrunk our world is, indisputably, the Internet. I still can remember the excitement of cyber surfing for the very first time, using the precursor browser called MOSAIC, in the early 1990s. Then the whole world witnessed an information revolution at an unprecedented scale, and the rest is history as they say.

The Internet has been touted as the information highway. In that context, the world has become a global village where most locations are only one click away. More important, the Internet has helped level the playing field where information hoarding has become next to impossible.

While Internet is the generic term that covers all things cyber, there are several enabling technologies, or products to be exact, that to my mind are critical enablers of this “instant” access, to places, to friends from far flung places, and to answers, which “virtually” guarantee that we become globe trotters in a heartbeat.

Not every one of us has the opportunity to fly in an airplane, taking a panoramic view of the ground as a gliding bird would. Even far less is the number of people who can view the entire earth from space while perched far up in the sky, virtually motionless. But thanks to Google Earth, the digital earth has become a reality (the tagline of the website says “a 3D interface to the planet”).

At a click of the mouse, the mechanical kind, we can swoop over land, descend on a neighborhood, and zoom in on our house, analogous to letting your fingers do the walking ushered in by the Yellow Pages. Admittedly, the images are static, and most likely taken some time in the past, akin to seeing stars in the night sky that have actually moved from the very spot that the light at that very instant indicates them to be. But its very nature of being on call at any time more than offsets the time lapse. After all ground features and for that matter, built up areas, do not change overnight.

Then there is Internet telephony. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is one. But here I’m referring to a free product that challenges the conventional wisdom that talks don’t come cheap. With the tagline that read “the whole world can talk for free”, Skype enables the user to “make free conference calls and create multi-chats so it’s like having all the family together in one’s own lounge”. My wife has used it to talk to her Mom back in Malaysia; her sis in Indonesia; her brother in China; and yet another brother in Oregon; both individually and in a group chat. Equipped with a webcam (but on one-to-one call), she is even able to see them after a near three-year hiatus.

Last but not the least, we have all the various search engines that are too numerous to name and that all of us have used at one time or the other. So we ask; we google; we consult the wikipedia online; we check the online dictionaries; and we look up, say English to Chinese translation. Knowledge at our fingertip is no more a mere slogan.

Who knows, one of these days (though may not be in our life time), we can even teleport ourselves to anywhere on earth, thus making us globe trotters literally.

But until them, we will have to be satisfied with virtual globe trotting, and for that we have many technologies to thank for, among which three of them I’ve discussed here as being my personal favorites.

What are yours?