Global consciousness, global village

Image via WikipediaAfter a bit more than 78 hours, I'm headed back to Chicago via London. On Thursday, I was at O'Hare, flying to Belgium. I have been in Brussels, passed through Antwerp and Rotterdam, to spend a day at the Peace Palace in the Hague. Then it was back to Brussels, with a brief explore of the Grande Plasse, Manichen Pis, and the street of the mussels restaurants.
In a way, I've been to the future and back. In 1973, we were reading McLuhan's Medium is the Message in a Mass Communications course, and being introduced to the concept of the "Global Village." Now intellectually, I know that business travelers have been experiencing the contraction of geographic space for 20 years, but this is the first time I have flown to Europe to work for a day after classes one week, and I'll be back in time for class next week.There is no need for me to revisit the ideas McLuhan presented, but it is the experience of it as an interesting and yet mundane experience that is notable.

I could be twittering as if I was sitting in my blogger p.j.s at home, yet I was crossing international boundaries. An the boundaries themselves have diminished since the advent of the EU. Of course, this trip, physically expanding, was fiscally demanding, as the dollar is not worth much compared to Euros or the British pound in the waning months of the Bush presidency. Well, we will be boarding from Brussels to London, so I'll sign off for now.