Oh our modern age....

[kengr]

Watching local TV coverage of the wait for the tsunami.

Currently they are showing a feed from a TV station in Honolulu. That station was interviewing folks standing in line outside a convenience store. One tourist they talked to was from (I think) Holland. When they asked him how he found out about the tsunami warmning, he said a friend in South Africa had seen it on the news and phoned him!!!

Juist imagine the disbelief you'd have gotten even 20 years ago if you'd tried selling that as part of the plot of a story.

Comments

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

That is so awesome to think about, how connected the world is these days, and how fast that connectedness happened.

[mikkop.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's strange.

I got first reports on IRC, as friends in Japan had some internet connectivity but phones were not working that well.

One friend responded to email but trains weren't running.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

That's truly boggling. If Vonnegut had written it into a story, we would've chuckled and said, "That wacky Kurt."

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Read an article - I believe by Asimov - about three decades ago which effectively predicted our current situation with cell phones and texting. The author missed a few things - for one, stating that our phone number would be our Social Security number and assigned at birth - but got others surprisingly right. At the end he noted that we would be so reliably interconnected that if you called your friend and he didn't answer, you could be pretty sure he was dead.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Heh. Not so for me; it just means that I either didn't get the signal, or possibly that I'm in another funk.

[kengr]

Just wait they'll make answering mandatory.

"Citizen! Why haven't you answered your phone?"

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

"You're not cleared for that information. Report for disintegration."