Clare Morin
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On Being Remote

11/24/2010

1 Comment

 
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I was mulling over the word 'remote' last night. What does 'remote' mean in today's technology-driven world?

Does it imply a hermit in the distant mountains?

It was around 8pm and I was waiting for word from a ship called The Antarctic Dream in Dorion Bay, Antarctica. They had just finished The Last Desert race, and I was waiting – as the 'remote writer' for the event - for news from a laptop at the southernmost tip of the planet, to bounce messages off a satellite in outer space and bring information to my Mac in Maine. So that I could then distribute these words to minds in 22 countries.

It wasn't quite working... there was a glitch in the system, an oddly-aligned planetary shift, and so the news was not quite coming through. And for a second, those runners in the White Continent became truly remote. They fell out of contact. They fell through the illusion and disappeared.

And I pondered what it meant - at that very moment - for me to be the remote writer of this event? Who was remote now? I considered how technology allows us to remain connected - when it decides to work, that is. And suddenly now, in today's world, to be remote is to be immensely connected. To be present - beyond our physical presence. To being a hologram, a globally-connected butterfly, whose real location is in a still forest yet who flies by night through cityscapes.

In the past few weeks, something has shifted. I am still sitting in the quiet hermit's cave, but I am simultaneously flying around the world and communing with all manner of characters. I am reporting on racers at the South Pole, chattering with my colleague in Hong Kong and brainstorming with a friend in New Zealand about our fabulous new project. I am in all of these places.

Yet, I have not left the building.

Is it karma that decides that one day you will be solitary and the next that you will burst into a web of life?


(Credit: isconti-Sforza tarot deck. Hermit. 15th century)

1 Comment
Elizabeth link
2/2/2011 12:07:09 pm

When we moved from Hong Kong to Sydney I was struck by how remote everything is here. Light hits earth and sea at such different angles than in the north. But most of all, it FEELS so remote to be here. The nation-state was founded on its remoteness. Such a contrast to HK, the little toe of China, at the center of so much of the best and worst of what's happening in Asia.

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