In our second session the class discussed the Information Revolution, a term that usually refers to the effects of dramatic technological improvements in communications, data storage, and computing. The relation to world geography is obvious -- just as the Industrial Revolution effectively shrunk the globe by reducing the time for travel to distant points, the Information Revolution has shrunk it further reducing the time for communicating with distant points -- often allowing for an effective time delay of zero (a phenomenon which has given rise to the curiously appropriate phrase "real time," as if previous delays made the passage of time more artificial).
But as the study of Geography is at least partially the study of locations, instantaneous communications can be considered to make the entire world one super-location. If it takes zero time to get to another place (even though virtually), then is it really another place at all?
Which brings me (finally) to Playing for Change. According to Wikipedia, Playing for Change is "a multimedia music project created by the American producer and sound engineer Mark Johnson with his Timeless Media Group, that seeks to bring together musicians from around the world." But just watch this video a few times. PFC is really a way, impossible before the Information Revolution, for musicians from around the world to collaborate on the same performance, while they are miles -- and often thousands of miles -- apart from one another. They bring the culture of their actual location into a concert which takes place -- where? The PFC website says that they are "connecting the world through music." Maybe they are. But it seems to me that Shakespeare's old maxim that "all the world's a stage" has now become literally (and virtually) true.
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