MYSTERIES OF CYBERSPACE          - 5/2/2006      <--Prev : Next-->



MYSTERIES OF CYBERSPACE

It never ceases to amaze me at just how fast an e mail will traverse through cyberspace.

I mean I can send my self an e mail, and hey presto, in a flash, as quick as lightning it is back in my In Tray !!

Even I know it has to go via my server in Harare, then over to the USA where my macmail account is stored, and then back to little old Bambazonke, a distance of some several thousand kilometres.

Any yet it does all this travelling in just a nano second. ?

Now I know I was born in the Dark Ages, when it took a whole day to travel from Fort Victoria to Bulawayo in our old Morris Minor, (four days if the rivers were running !!) but this cyberspace nonsense is a source of absolute fascination to me !!

I spend hours sending myself e mails and sitting with my stop watch seeing just how quickly the e mails get back into my In Box.

It doesn't even matter how large the file is either !! It can be an itty bitty 2 kilobyte file or a gigantic photo of two megabytes that I send to Great Aunt Suzanne and Great Uncle Gerald in Australia, and if I put a copy to myself, it will still come back in a flash.

Only very occasionally will it dilly dally somewhere in intergalactical cyberspace for a few minutes and then all sorts of dark foreboding thoughts cross my suspicious mind as to where exactly it has stopped off for some sort of sinister perusal !!

I clearly remember Mom driving us to visit our Granny in Gwelo when we were very little.

The rivers were in full flood as it was at the height of the "rainy Season" and we still had the famous "strip roads" and our dear old "low level" bridges.

We spent days camped on the side of the Insiza River, several hours camped on the wrong side of the Shangani River and even more time perched on the banks of the swollen Vungu River where brother Gavin developed a severe case of measles just to test Mom's mettle !!

How Mom would have shuddered at the very thought of an e mail doing a complete three sixty of the world in no time at all.

I mean even today it takes two weeks for a letter to get via snail mail courtesy of the Posts and telecommunications Corporation from Bulawayo to Harare (and we even have aeroplanes (sometimes)

And so back to my musings, I am so smart I even confuse myself sometimes, perhaps I will solve the problem for once and for all and just Google it !! (As they say in the Classics !!)

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