Our Digital Greed

Ive been here a week now and have had quite a busy time of it... But Ive only posted on my blog once which has probably left some of my friends a bit worried... Sorry.
Its not that Ive been so busy that Ive not had time to post. Indeed, the early mornings and evenings have had time for posts, and that's normally when Id have spent time writing down my thoughts...
But the problem has been internet access.

Cape Town of course has lots of internet access (thoroughly modern city of course) and the hostel where I have been staying has a good "fat" bandwidth internet connection and multiple WiFi nodes.
But it also has lots of people staying there, and it seems that absolutely everyone who is staying here is pretty much permanently skyping and video chatting with friends and family these days.
Ive gone on these long voyages four times now in the last 7 years and Ive been seeing how mobile digital access has been changing in that short time-frame... Its truly amazing.
On the first trip it was about 10-20% of people who had some sort of mobile digital device with them and used it frequently. This time it is absolutely 100% and people are glued to their little screens virtually all the time now.
Likewise, at hostels and cafes during those morning and evening hours it used to be that there would be little groupings of travelers chatting  quietly (or noisily) over coffee or breakfast, but these days, breakfast is a pretty much silent and individual affair as everyone is fully engaged with their mobile device! And even when things to get chattier in the evenings when travelers return to their accommodations after the days adventures and have a beer or two, its only because people are multi-tasking and are using their data device as well as interacting with others.

...And that has been the problem... There has simply not been enough band-width to cope with the enormous volume of streaming traffic... and Im pretty sure that if the hostel doubled its available bandwidth it would likewise be soaked up immediately by the travelers staying there... We are insatiable!
So, all Ive really been able to do for the past week is check my emails and send off a few short responses to important questions from friends.

Its early days in this trip but the tone is I think pretty much set... The mobile data revolution is pretty much over... and it is a huge change to all of our styles of personal interaction.
I think its a good thing but I also think we are yet to deal with many of the consequences of this very sudden change to our society.