I haven't posted much lately due to a heavy work/travel schedule ending in several days of vacation in Istanbul. At the moment I'm burning some time in an expat bar near the Sultan Ahmet mosque. My plane leaves at 5 a.m., so I'm closing down the bars and not bothering with a hotel tonight.
So here I am at the junction of Europe and Asia -- literally, the Bosphorus straits -- in a modern city full of wi-fi connections, mobile telephones, and a rapidly increasing standard of living. Satellite TV. Slick new trams. A booming city with a population somewhere between 10 and 15 million people, maybe half again as large as New York.
This is the former Ottoman empire, the former Byzantine empire, a former capital of the Roman empire. Today it is a land with ambitions of sealing the breach between East and West, the Islamic world and the Christian-dominated world, a "joining of the great civilizations" as they say, by becoming a member of the European Union.
It is a place where the burqa and belly dancing coexist, a passionately secular state in an Islamic region. (Mass demonstrations last weekend supported a strong separation of state and religion.) It borders on Greece and Bulgaria on the European side; Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Georgia on the Asian side.
In the background, the Clash are on the entertainment system: "Rocking the Casbah."
Half a dozen blocks away there's a labyrinth of shops all organized by craft: Metal workers. Makers of tools to work metal. Button sellers. Shoe stores.
In a world where information was scarce, it was important to cluster such vendors physically.
That's the past.
The present, as always, is a mix of past and future.
Some of us have the entire World Wide Web at our fingertips through ubiquitous free wi-fi connections. Here in Istanbul we have the Aya Sofia, just around the corner, constructed 532 to 537, common era. We have "honor killings" and we have women delivering the TV news. (Keep in mind that women simply did not anchor U.S. newscasts before 1970.)
The future? It's a place where the gross inequities are narrowed. When information is easily available everywhere, when bandwidth is nearly free, information-based jobs can exist anywhere as well. And jobs that depend on information -- isn't that pretty much most of them? -- are liberated from many of the constraints of geography.
For a few this may mean some pain and loss; for the many, it is a gain. It means a happier and healthier human race.
It has been a good trip. I'll be flying home in a few hours, more optimistic than I've felt in quite awhile.