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- Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images
Travel broadens the mind--unless your destination is a news-free bubble.
Since I left London last week I've lived in just such a bubble, cut off from my regular fix of newspapers and journals from four different countries and two continents, from the full BBC programming and other networks, unlimited online sources and daily interactions with a wide range of primary sources including politicians and their back-room teams, in person, on the phone, by email and via Twitter and Facebook. I'm in California, a state at least as self-absorbed as any in the Union and especially in the run-up to the Oscars, but even here it's easier than ever before to stay informed. True, the local media are just that: local. (As a write, a freeway crash tops local news headlines ahead of the turmoil in the Middle East.) But now, ensconced in a Los Angeles hotel room, I am able to consult many formal and informal news services and interact with my contacts. I've been online for several hours now, marvelling at the earthquakes--political and literal--that have shaken different parts of the world in the past few days as I traveled, without internet connection or TV or radio. I've been touring with a rock band (a story for a different kind of blog) and in that hermetically sealed universe, was forced to remember what life used to be like, before the internet, and after that, before the internet became fast and technology got cheaper and more easily deployable. In my bubble, though largely unaware of breaking news, I thought about the extraordinary upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt and the wider region, and the rekindling of the Iranian opposition, and about the debate that these events inspired,
