Yesterday morning, I picked up the phone and called an aunt who lives halfway around the world. We chatted for about 15 minutes – the call is going to cost me less than the cup of coffee I sipped while we spoke.<\/p>\n
In the course of our conversation I found out something new about\u00a0my aunt. She\u00a0had travelled between Canada and Europe\u00a0by ship 60 years ago – aboard the Empress of Canada<\/em> and Empress of Scotland<\/em>, 2 members of the fleet of ocean liners operated by Canadian Pacific. She went off for some travel after she finished school, before she got married.<\/p>\n The conversation made me think about my kids travelling. They fly and I can track their flight’s location on-line. We generally make sure that the kids have a cell phone that allows us to stay in touch and we can see their photos nearly instantly.<\/p>\n In my aunt’s day, a 3 minute call between Europe and Canada was a luxury reserved for urgent news. To this day, we start our calls with an announcement that everyone is allright – and no special lifecycle announcements. I can call just to say hi.<\/p>\n I don’t take any of this for granted.<\/p>\n Some people\u00a0ask whether we are too connected, are we “on” too much? They suggest a nostalgic look back in time and\u00a0tell us\u00a0that our parents did just fine without all of this technology.<\/p>\n I don’t think that ‘just fine’ is good enough. Maybe\u00a0our parents\u00a0did ‘just fine’. But we are doing better than that. We can call around the world for a lower price than calling from Toronto to Waterloo just 20 years ago. In real, not adjusted, dollars. We can stay in touch when travelling. We can share our experiences easier – so that it doesn’t come as a surprise to our nieces and nephews that their aunt or uncle was a globe-trotter. And we can respond faster to emergencies.<\/p>\n Our parents generation may have managed just fine with letters and airmail, but we are managing even better with our current portfolio of communications capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n I won’t take it for granted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday morning, I picked up the phone and called an aunt who lives halfway around the world. We chatted for about 15 minutes – the call is going to cost me less than the cup of coffee I sipped while we spoke. In the course of our conversation I found out something new about\u00a0my aunt. …<\/p>\n