The Global Now is a term I use to describe
- the mental awareness of the global world
- the various time zones - envisioning the dark, light, sunrise, sunset, noontime meal, midnight mysteries - of places around the world
- my colleagues, friends, family, dog, my beloved Queen of Angeles in their current timespace
- and the varied activities: working, play, sleeping, eating of above around the world
While being aware of my individual, personal, immediately direct experience.
It's viewing my life from a global perspective while holding/experiencing my individual context.
Let me give you a few examples:
Early Morning Los Angeles
When I travel to Europe my workday is through the quiet hours of the California night. Right as my mind is waking up (even if my body has acclimated to the time zone), tuned to the rhythms of Los Angeles, I finish my European workday. Before closing down my laptop, collecting my electricity adapter and hailing my taxi to the hotel, one last check of twitter.... an early morning tweet from LAFD - Los Angeles Fire Department talking about a morning cup of coffee. Physically 5500+ miles away, in a instant my mind is right there, on Robertson or Santa Monica or Wilshire Blvd in the pre-dawn darkness. #theglobalnow
Innotribe Week: San Francisco, Singapore, London
A few weeks ago Innotribe hosted events in San Francisco, Singapore, Bangkok and London within a day of each other. I kicked off the week with our Future of Money panel with Yobie from Citi, Paul from Barclays, Shamir from Simple and Michael Michael from Burning Man. Tweets and Instagram pictures went out with the #innotribe tag. Just as we finished a celebratory conference dinner, the Singapore Startup Challenge kicked off with tweets from Matteo and Nektarios and my APAC colleagues. I raised a gin and tonic to them as the sun rode West, heading to bed before the winner was announced. Later, the sun rose on London and #innotribe represented at our business forum panel.
All around the globe, as time flowed, the world turned, I saw my colleagues and I - tiny moments on the crust of this earth, a globe hanging in the universe. Pinpricks of light, stars in the world. #theglobalnow
#FutrChat
Once a month, the Association of Professional Futurists holds a chat on twitter. It's about a specific topic: the future of ----. For that one hour, colleagues from the APF get on twitter: DC, Kansas City, Florida, Seattle, Texas, Sydney, Hawaii, London and beyond... a firehose of rapid fire conversation. Intimate, public. I imagine the usernames, my colleagues, collaborators, all over the world, with each tweet, at their computer or device tuning into our shared time-space on the internet - one hour - we come together in a timeless, locationless space. We are together in conversation. #theglobalnow
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