By far my favorite news providers have to be the brits at BBC. They’ve got it all from the content, predominantly non-biased views and easy to use interface that links you to more fun stories. While saving news on Iran and Hamas’ stranglehold on Gaza for later, I came across a story that apparently has been big news for the past year in the UK but I have just now discovered. As it turns out the BBC had sent a shipping container on a trip around the world with only a satellite tracker and small journalism team to write observations. Basically we have a blown up version of the “where’s George?” experiment we can see on the occasional one dollar bill. You log on to a website and see where it has been. As a student of geography, I find this fascinating 🙂
The box arrives back in the UK
The box transported many different products to many locales. A listing of which appears here along with other info about the journey.
If nothing more the BBC box provided an opportunity for the average citizen to observe something in real time. There’s just something cool about that. When I was flying from Australia back to the U.S. the aircraft was equipped with gps tracking right in the arm of the chair. I spent much of the 18 hour flight just looking where I was. The box was also a glimpse at the global economy in real time and a real situation. Something tangible, not a line plot of the stock exchange. Trends were seen that mimicked the economy. In periods of economic downturn a period of stagnation would occur; evidence of a highly globalized and interdependent world. It would seem that we will always rise and fall together.
GeographyBiz 