It’s almost as if you’re there…
In today’s blah blah of internet blah and news blah blah it’s as well to keep your feet on the ground. Or so I found yesterday.
There was a big fire in East London. In the office BBC News 24 and Sky News relayed helicopter pictures live, and I sat at my desk watching them and several news sites update themselves. And as I watched the pictures on my PC and on the TVs, satellites and fibre optic cables relaying sound and video to various national news hubs, relaying them again to my desktop, the very latest digital communication technologies working seamlessly together, a tiny thought crawled across my brain: “Hang on… that’s St Paul’s Cathedral in that picture… I’m quite near St Paul’s… I sometimes look out the window and see St Paul’s…” And I turned my chair round, and looked through the window. There, through a sheet of glass larger and clearer than a giant plasma screen, with less delay than a satellite link, and without a reporter’s pointless commentary, I saw first hand the smoke rising across the city.
“Oh,” I thought, “it’s a big fire.” And went back to work.
