THE TYRANNY OF DISTANCE

It used to be terribly expensive to get away from here. There were only flights available through one airline and a ferry that only sailed during the short summer to Denmark and Norway. This has all changed in the last few years and we as a nation don’t see ourselves as isolated as before, but the rest of the world does. I have lived in New Zealand, and that is at the end of the world as I know it, but Iceland is right between Europe and America. It is closer to New York than L.A. is. But we are still under the spell of the tyranny of distance.
What I discovered on my journeys in cyberspace was that as much as we make fun of the ignorance of the North Americans, we are no better. We are simply ignorant in different areas. I see us as high tech aborigines, and we don’t know how to deal with how quickly we moved off the dirt floors to the techno houses.
When I jumped on the wave into the interspace of the Internet, my life changed forever. I became part of a much greater world than I had imagined possible. I discovered a medium to travel without going anywhere. I learned to use the Internet to work with people from all over the world, to create something new, but most importantly, I have learned that I don’t know anything even if I am made to believe I do. I realized that I didn’t know much about world poetry except the few poems people had been inspired to translate to Icelandic. It totally blew my mind to see poets from Indonesia, Japan, Colombia or the States perform. Words fly through the air like samurai swords, shouts and laughter around the slam.
The Internet is my muse. I am a part of a world of action poets and artists. These people have come into my life through the gateways of the Internet and inspired me to be me, all the way; a high-tech aboriginal Viking on rollerblades.