Cutting Edge

Last night I participated in the worldwide "online classroom" that Oprah and Eckhart Tolle (author of the book I keep talking about!) created in order to further discuss the book A New Earth.

Oprah kept referring to it as "cutting edge," and it was a pretty cool thing -- to think that more than 500,000 people logged in at the same time to watch a live event.  You could send emails and access the "class" via Skype (which allows you to see the person if they have a camera) and phone.  Hence, it was completely interactive and unscripted as questions were addressed as they were asked.

But after 20 minutes my feed crashed and I couldn't get back in.  I received an email this morning apologizing and explaining that it was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet.  I could feel it -- the energy of it, the excitement of breaking new ground or pushing the bytes as it were.  I was not the least bit surprised when it crashed -- it was an experiment, and only Oprah could harness that many people and convince them to be online, no matter where they were in the world.  One woman was in Germany, and it was the end of the night for her (it was on 9:00 p.m. my time).  

It resulted in 242 gigabytes per second of information moving through the Internet -- which is one of those big numbers hard to imagine.  Eight bits make a byte.  A byte ... you know, I started to explain this in "layman" terms and then realized that no one would read it!  So let's just say that it was a SHITLOAD of information pouring through the Internet -- which is really just a bunch of cables all attached to people's computers at home which send their information through servers (where your email is stored for example) but ultimately 500,000 different computers were accessing the SAME information at the same time and it was too much.  Not a big surprise.

What does this mean?  Well, for one, it means that technology has to meet the demand, and if Oprah is saying that for the next ten weeks she needs enough bandwidth available to remain stable for 90 minutes and feed into the homes of 500,000 people across the WORLD, then I am thinking it has to get done.  And that's pretty wild.  I know I seem to have an Oprah thing going, but I am beginning to understand it.  I am beginning to see that she is something greater than herself, and for a long time she knew it, but now she is starting to smack herself upside the head and say stop buying shoes girl and get on with your life's purpose.

She is removing ego from the picture, and I am removing labels from mine and we're finding each other again!  :::::::::::::::sniff:::::::::::::::::  I'm having a moment.

I predict it's all going to be Internet ... I believe there will no longer be network television or printed newspapers in the not-to-far future.   

And I'll get to write about how I saw it all happen!