Ever since I read “Death of Distance” by Frances Cairncross in the late 1990′s, I’ve been a believer that increasingly better devices (e.g., webcams) and the ubiquity of broadband (i.e., FAST broadband with decent upload speeds) would slowly-but-surely compress distance until we’d be able to stay connected regardless of where we happen to be geographically on our planet.

Our neighbors across the street were in their driveway one day saying goodbye to their son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons (one of whom was a baby) as they were departing for a 2 year stint to London.

Since I care for these people and thought about how these little ones would change dramatically over a 2 year period — and Grandpa and Grandma would miss out on so much and the boys not gaining a close connection with them — I sort of stepped out of bounds a bit and evangelized Skype. Trying it out, my neighbors ended up setting a weekly “call” over webcams (between Eden Prairie and London) on a Sunday (at 1pm for them and before bedtime for the boys in London) and stayed in very close touch the entire time they were there.

Yet another reason why synchronous broadband is an imperative throughout Minnesota.