It’s A Small World
by ted2112 HSM team writer
In the 1967 World’s fair in New York, Walt Disney wanted to do something different than the usual showboating of progress and technology paraded out by various countries. Even back then the world was shrinking; that benchmark World’s Fair showed off cutting edge electronics and infrastructure that was starting to make it possible to see far off places, be informed of events overseas instantly and to communicate in real time. Sure the technology worked, but to been able to do this, it meant a copper wire, several telephone switchboard operators and a ton of money.
However the world was changing in 1967, and that’s exactly what Walt Disney really wanted to show us. He didn’t care so much about the technology involved; he more cared on what the implications were. And to somebody like Walt Disney, those implications were all amazingly positive.
How would he chose to convey his vision of a connected world and what it all really meant? In true Disney style, he did this with a simple person by person experience: a boat ride and a dangerously contagious song, which for the sake of everyone’s sanity, won’t be repeated here – much. In forty-five years that ride hasn’t stopped, in fact we are still on it now – metaphorically – as we speak, and it has led us down that river to the shores of Home itself.
Our world called Home is a technological wonder. We meet, play and dream for free in a kind of middle realm; a place where no matter where you are from, you are welcome. Home is a representation of nowhere, yet it represents everywhere. Most places in our virtual world I bet you can find something to identify with.
Back in the World’s Fair’s days, even though it was about technology, people still had to physically get together to show others their ideas; people still had to go to the fair to see these ideas. There was nothing like the desert oasis clubhouse to meet in and exchange ideas. Most companies I have worked for have regular virtual meetings, and it was unnecessary to fly in and exchange information. Yes it’s boring, but effective, and in fact we all now take it for granted.
Many of us have ridden the It’s a Small World ride and had the song by the Sherman Brothers stuck in our heads. I personally got stuck on the ride in Disney World when it broke down several years ago, and thought I was going to loose my mind. If there was a loose ice pick on our boat there would have been a fight as to who got to it first and gouged out their eardrums. Whether we like the ride or not is not what I’m trying to convey; it’s the meaning of the ride and what it means to us today as residents of Home.
The small world of today we live in is very small, much smaller than it was back in 1967. We have seen our small world from not just a boat ride, but from another celestial body. Today we don’t think twice about having a real time conversation with someone in a far away place.
In our last HSM production meeting, I got to thinking about the conversation between some of us from Hawaii and some of us from the east coast. If I were to jump on a plane traveling at forty thousand feet it would take me nine hours to get there, yet there we were laughing in real time at a joke and I remember thinking how small the world has become; that I was laughing at a joke told that very moment by somebody six thousand miles away.
When we are on Home, we make the world small. Just as cyber space exists in our minds, time and distance ceases to exist as well. There are over fifty million PS3’s in the world today, and they are scattered to the four corners. In our little corner of virtual space we call Home, we have tens of thousands people all gathered, sharing, playing, communicating in a totally live environment. These are real people, not some AI program. We have indeed made the world small.
In this time of year where we reflect and give thanks, I want to thank all the dreamers like William Gibson who first coined the phrase “Cyber Space” and dreamed up a place we could go into virtually. To Walt Disney, who wanted us to look at the world with wonder and hope. To MIT and Stanford University for helping pioneer the World Wide Web. To Sony who rolled the dice on a crazy idea called the Play Station, and to all the people just like you and me who look out on our small world everyday with a sense of having fun and being good citizens of an ever shrinking planet.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
November 22nd, 2012 by ted2112 | 3 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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Great read. I was soon fascinated about having friends all over North America on Home. After we created The Black Hat squad, our Novus-Prime club. I met my first world jumper from UK. Later we had to crate a second branch, Black Hat Squadron. We have members from 7 countries on 3 continents and our meet and greet at the last E3 looked like a UN meeting! With conversation in 3 or 4 languages… 1 more if you include airport english
Yes the world is getting smaller everyday and thanks to Sony for this amazing platform.
n.b. Nice pic of the biosphere, the U.S.A. “pavillion” at the Montréal expo 67
Really liked readin’ that Ted. The world is very small, in fact I watched a documentary the other day about architecture and engineering, and it’s effect in our skyscrapers, but at one point in it they pointed out that even though our cities have almost doubled in size in only the last 20 years; If you gathered up every city in the world and stuck em together into one massive super-city, you could fit ALL of us onto Australia.
I see Cyber Space a bit like that, but intangible. Which kkinda boils us down into nothing more than a buzz of thoughts, ideas and chatter. But the human element will always be there, to give us a sense of place and belonging amongst it all -- and maybe even a sense of home.
Great article!!! It’s so much fun to meet people from all over the world and hang out on Home. I am on the East Coast and I have met some people who live on the West Coast and from other countries on Home. If it wasn’t for Home, I would have never met these people. Now they are my friends and people I talk to regularly. It’s fun to get to know people. I am thankful to have met these people. I enjoy getting to know people on Home and think it’s great that people from all over the world can hang out with each other. Great read, and Happy Thanksgiving to you too! : )