Smaller or Not

Technology is great. It lets me communicate with people all over the world almost instantly. News from the far corners of the world is available at the push of a button. When a major event happens on the other side of the world I hear about it almost instantly rather than weeks later as was the case with my parents when they were young. The world is getting smaller.

On the other hand, I recently read an interview with a guy who feels just the opposite. To him our world is expanding, not getting smaller. (He rarely sees a need to cite references in his writing so I won't site him here.) Now that I think about it, he may be right.

My parents gave me a watch when I was in the 7th grade. It was a small simple watch but I couldn't figure out how to get the back off of it. (I had a disease when I was younger that led me to believe that a watch would run better if I cleaned it, no matter how new it was.) It took me weeks before I figured out the right place to lever the back off that watch. With the simple act of removing that cover the watch went from something that seemed small and simple to a marvel of never ending complexity.

Perhaps our world is like that. Maybe our technology hasn't made our world smaller, it has just helped us peal back its cover a little bit more. With each question we answer we seem to reveal ten new questions.What we end up with is a marvelous world of ever expanding complexity. And to think, some people say there is no God.

I should mention that my watch never ran right after I opened the cover. Somehow I think we can do the same with our world if we are not careful. Even so I am glad I experienced the spinning wonders of that watch back then. It inspired my mind and somehow caused me to dream about possibilities. I need to approach this expanding world we live in with that kind of enthusiasm.