Window on the world, open to all

THE EDITOR, Madam:

At least one box office smash, Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kirt Vonnegut, deals with a main character who writes to the editor of his local newspaper. In poor Billy Pilgrim’s (the main character’s) letter, the story line involved, in a sense, ‘time travel’ – a recurring trip both back into the horrors of war and, at the same time, into the future – an interesting theme certainly, but that’s not what I’m writing about today, well, not really.

I’m writing a letter to the editor, like Vonnegut, not just to share a fantasy, but to get someone’s attention about a suggestion I think, in a novel sense, might just offer all of us a new ‘window on the world’ in a very special way; one that might help all of us to see ourselves as we really are, and might just help us to resolve some of our differences.

I’m speaking, in the figurative sense, of our developing an idea that is not some fantasy about a greener world or one that carries the burden of regrettable history, or one that needs to identify itself as a something or other for it to be what it is. But, instead one, that has its ‘hardware’ easily constructed – I’m told that much of it is already here; and if that’s the case, then I suggest it might just needs a push in the right direction.

With the use of such a system, I envision we might all come to develop something of a ‘new world order’ than what we’ve read about...one in which phone screens and computer monitors all around the world would be on the Internet in vast numbers and able to watch ‘live’ what is going on in the street, any given street, anywhere.

In other words, a well-designed net of live webcams.

I remember reading about that in an emergency situation here in the US. Recently, a satellite transmission system, Starlink, was utilised to help isolated hurricane victims.

So I thought, wouldn’t it be great if Elon Musk, or someone like him (I hear there are quite a few of them in Jamaica), got it into their head to create something like a worldwide, ‘people webcam’ network, which is open and transparent. While we let the tourists have their scenery, we can get our windows down to street level and bring the world to us as it happens, so that we can see what is truth, and not have to be told what we’re really like and what to believe about each other.

Wouldn’t that be something?

ED MCCOY

Bokeelia, Florida