The Death of Distance

I addressed the following questions:

Is Asia growing closer to "Europe'' and if so how?

• Not without human, social or business purposes;
• example: Indian wedding by videoconference.

Is distance dying and why?

• Yes: the potential for a "presence" both synchronously though telephone, broadcast and two-way video conferences and asynchronously through email and world-wide-web internet can give the appearance of its death;
• no: the realities of separation, geographical and temporal still remain, particularly correspondents do not share more than a limited contextual experience.

Who gains and loses by this?

• Losers: technology poor, publishing establishment, disseminators;
• winners: technology rich, information engineers, communicators, democracy.

How do culture and values change as a result?

• New cultures, human desire for community;
• New dangers, common sense still applies;
• Culture and value clashes more evident to all - defensiveness from authorities and awareness promoted to citizens.

What impact does this have if so?

• Permits cost effective communication;
• supports new forms of discourse;
• lowers to insignificant the costs of global publishing;
• permits knowledge transfer to and from all, further democratising knowledge;
• widens choice for services, collaboration and markets;
• sanitises human contact;
• presents a massive challenge to develop protocols for taxonomising, evaluating and verifying authenticity of information;
• shakes up current media world;
• should change our concept of literacy.