Small World

A decade or two ago, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean would have seemed like an abstract tragedy, a set of grim but distant death statistics. It's different now. A disaster even in a remote part of the planet sends shock waves through out our interconnected world. Natural disasters are a constant in human history. But what's different today in our newly interconnected society is that people from one end of the globe to another feel the impact. Americans have distant connections and even for those with no personal ties in the disaster, the spread of global communications brings the distant horror home. Yet even as it unfolds in our living rooms or on our computers screens, we are still powerless as ever to rescue the doomed. There seems nothing else to do but sit and hope, here on the far side of the planet that seems so tiny yet so vast.