But cyberspace does more than demolish remoteness in the service of planetary discovery. It also compresses time. Students in a Michigan classroom interact instantaneously with archeologists in Egypt. This real-time effect is shrinking our planet. Events halfway around the globe become backyard concerns when we learn of them in real time.
Dry facts become living events.
Scientists the world over are receiving feeds from a lonely Internet research node in the Amazon. Technologies created for the military are now used to track whales and even an errant Malaysian elephant, thus saving it from almost certain death. And schoolchildren nationwide have become nature watchers by following the migration of butterflies across a continent. As the planet shrinks, our worldview expands. And because the revelations arrive in real time, we can do more than just watch.