A million acres: July 28, 1997 issue of New Thinking

July 28, 1997 New Thinking:
A million acres

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July 28, 1997

A million acres

By Gerry McGovern

We are what we believe. The world was once flat. The Americas did not exist. Then, a round world and new continents were 'discovered.' But pretty much from day one, there has always been another space which we inhabited.

Call it dreams, story telling, heaven, fiction. Name it what way you will but every child and most adults go there at night. Every time we pick up a novel or watch a film or pray we go there too.

We live partly here and partly there. Did we invent 'there' because here was not all we wanted? Or is it just there, a natural land of the imagination.

With the Internet we actually arrive on the dry land of the imagination. No longer is it a place beyond our control. Although our capacity to control this new space is still limited by the great barrier of bandwidth, it will not always be. In twenty years - such a short, short time - imagine what the Internet will be like!

It seems like a necessary thing for us to do. Every thing the human comes into contact with it seeks to control and mold. The land we live on we build on. There is no mountain we cannot climb, no animal we cannot hunt. Mars is there and so must we be.

All the countries in the world will come online. It's like waking up one morning to find another million acres beneath our feet. They must be walked on, used, tilled, built on.

In ten years, every country that has not replicated itself in some online way will be living in the fourth world; the first world having become cyberspace. Every country that does not use its million acres may well lose them to another stronger country or perhaps an even stronger multinational.

Selling sand to the Arabs or ice to the Eskimos may have a bitter ironic twist to it in the new dominion of cyberspace. As we all become global tourists, who is to say that only Ireland can sell Ireland, only Poland can sell Poland, only Morocco can sell Morocco?

We may see a new colonization, where the colonizer doesn't even have to physically arrive to be there, and more importantly, to exploit what is unique about a country.

In the global sway of things, there is no such thing as fairness and there is little concept of right. The rich resources of culture and the imagination will be as greedily sought after as gold and diamonds were sought after two hundred years ago.

Of course, for people like you and me, lucky enough to be among the first, the potential and excitement is great. It is indeed an awesome feeling to be out here looking on a million acres and a million million acres. While there are moments like this when I think of the unlucky ones, these are but moments.

I want to explore and build. I want to use the picks and shovels of the mind. It's a racing feeling, a surging forward movement, reaching out to the future so quickly unfolding all around me.

Gerry McGovern

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As we all become global tourists, who is to say that only Ireland can sell Ireland, only Poland can sell Poland, only Morocco can sell Morocco?