Influence

That seems to be what it's all about these days of hyper-connectedness. I'm not concerned about whom or how many I influence in the world, but it is fascinating to be able to see where in the world my influence may have spread through this web site. The yellow areas in this unique-users-location-by-country map shown here indicate zero visitors. Dark blue the most visitors. Light blue fewer. Light brown very few. Two hundred sixty-four cities in all around the world. And some of the locations are especially intriguing, making me wonder why in the world someone there would visit this little web site offering such meager content.

I'm pretty sure the light brown spots in Antarctica are anomalies of map colorization. I doubt anyone there has visited, but it's hard to tell for sure. I've been to some of the places myself, an experience I wish everyone could enjoy. Living in a foreign land where the language and customs and sights and so much more are so different yet so familiar at the most basic level is exciting, frightening, challenging. In this day and age of jet-anywhere anytime travel convenience it may not be as exciting as it was during the years I traveled, which was less exciting than it was for people traveling the world long before the beginning of the jet age.

Now my travels are limited to road trips of increasingly limited range. But it's fun to travel vicariously via the World Wide Web as more of the world is shared here digitally in ever-increasing audio-visual detail. And even though it doesn't satisfy the full range of senses, it's a pretty cool level of influence for this aging old hermit to enjoy.