Hearing Voices

This week I finally put my investment in a good quality PC headset to use. Using the mystical powers of the internet to bridge thousands of miles and talk, all be it in the same broken fashion of those "satellite phone" news reports, with some nice people from New Zealand. I know them though one of the huge MMOGs I play (Massively Multiplayer Online Games for those not in the know), EVE.

It's quite bizarre playing and talking in "real-time" with people whose world is upside down to yours (and not just due to the fact they live on the underside of the world and are therefore physically the other way up to me). As we plunge on towards winter, they are enjoying the springtime. When I get up on a morning, it's their evening, and vice versa. They put their clocks forwards just over a week before we put ours back. They play when I sleep, sleep when I work, work when I play.

But the real beauty of the Internet (no, it's not all those naked bodies in the darker corners) is that it doesn't really matter. In the few snatched hours where our days overlap, we play and laugh together, and while we've not had occasion to cry together, we could. We plan together, work together, build, fight and destroy together. If it wasn't for the slight time lag in voice coversations and the southern hemisphere accents, they might as well be in the room next door.

For the wired generation, world is a very small place, and that can't be an entirely bad thing.