“…we’ll give you the world.” That’s the famous slogan of WINS, the all-news radio station in New York City. But when news happens, it’s amazing what you can access in 22 minutes or less with a laptop and an Internet connection.

Huffington Post reports that Israel’s ground assault on Gaza has begun. A quick bit of Googling reveals this Wired story about how YouTube and Twitter are weapons in the info war. Both stories contain comments from readers around the world ranging from the insightful to the insulting.

Another few minutes of searching reveals a slew of interesting real-time Twitter feeds of significance: the Israeli Consulate in New York, the Al Jazeera feed on the events in Gaza, a feed from Jordan under the name tweetsfromgaza and Gazamom, the feed of a Palestinian journalist living in North Carolina who seems to be in regular contact with her father in Gaza. Searching for #gaza on Twitter reveals many more.

As events halfway around the world unfold, it’s worth pausing to consider how incredibly networked we are today. To say that the flow of digital information is instantaneous has become a tired cliche, but spend a few minutes (you don’t even need to take as many as 22) and it’s genuinely mind-boggling how much information one can gather.

It’s equally mind-boggling how we’re starting to take this astonishing level of information access for granted. We shouldn’t. Ever.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Rants 'n' Such, Social Media, This 'n' That.