The Dream

We started to travel in the early eighties. We were young adventurers, dubbed travelers - the word backpacker not yet in wide use..

To kids like us, a computer was a big secret box in the underground valves of NASA. Electronic calculators were the latest rage. Leaving a voice message was high tech,  and making a phone call from a car unheard of. Mail came wrapped in paper envelopes, and flying on a commercial jet was a major trip.

A wall divided Europe. The brave in the east would listen to news from the west – behind closed doors, ears tight to AM radios transmitting "Voice of America." Wire was a good thing and Bluetooth just an old Viking King who had connected Denmark to Sweden.

Our first adventure started on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The train pushed past wastelands of communist Russia and then out to the world: China, Tibet and beyond.

In Tibet, we trekked to Mount Everest wearing vintage trench coats and stuffed Mao jackets, our map to base camp scribbled down by a friend. We had never heard of altitude illness, or much else really, and trekked right over a 5000 meter high pass on our first day. We hid out from Chinese check points, asking local yak shepherds to point out the direction to "Chooomalooma."

We carried only one sleeping bag between us – no tents and no gas. But we had five cans of pineapple and 20 packs of cigarettes for the trek.

We strolled through central Borneo, living in the jungle in search for Punans – the migrating tribe that uses blow guns for kill. We shot photos with an old Olympus and received reports from home once in a blue moon at the nearest Post office carrying Poste Restante. At times, we would find a telegraph station where we could call home for five bucks a minute on an impossibly delayed line. There was no Internet and no sat phones available for young explorers like us. We just rumbled happily around the world using whatever means we could find along the way.

This was a romantic, free spirited time of fake stamps (carved out from potatoes) providing ample visa – and permit imprints in our passports. False student IDs were acquired in the dark corridors of Hong Kong's Chunking Mansion for discount train fares on mainland China. Illegal turquoise trade between Tibet and Nepal added funds to travel.

Time passed. In the spring of 2001, we stepped off Antarctica's ice. We had just completed a 62-day skiing expedition wearing computers on our bodies and screens fitted into tiny eyepieces. Custom designed software transmitted our pictures over satellite.

Much had transpired since those early years of the Eighties. We had mounted the world´s highest Webcam on Everest. A blind man was about to scale the same mountain, where a Sherpa had already slept on the summit. Solar panels powered our boat, tents and sleds. The internet connected us to the entire world.

The Old World and the new one – which is then better? To us, edge technology is a thrilling adventure. Properly used, it is a valuable tool for communication, safety and exploration. It is a vehicle to space. True, in many ways the old days were less complicated and more slow paced, with plenty of time for contemplation. We still need that at times.

But the New World has brought us a promise of places yet unknown, brilliant knowledge unveiled and an exchange of ideas between people that was never before possible. Born to explore – how can we resist?

And so the times are changing. Expedition reports, formerly delivered to royalty long after the journey, are now dispatched daily straight into the homes of everyone who wishes to join. The buzz from the mobile in the middle of lunch hour announces a message from Antarctica.

It is the ultimate Survivor show, and it doesn't get more real than this. Its real people taking real risks in adventures shared instantly with the world, yet with a big difference: In real-life expeditions, there are no scripts, set rules or camera crews. We are entirely out on our own, sharing our loneliness, deepest emotions, greatest fears, desperate failures and ultimate triumphs with complete strangers.

Today's tech involves video transmitted straight from Everest's death zone to your browser. GPS positions marked on 3D maps. Weather reports direct to your satellite phone. But also, space rockets built by non-scientists on floating platforms in no-mans territory. And Artificial Intelligence creating software in complicated steps not even clear to her programmers, with the single mission to fulfill our wishes at the push of a button.

Yes, it is a bit frightening, just like any new frontier. But it is also an amazing age, and it has just begun. Jules Verne and Da Vinci would have flipped. But here we are carrying their torch.

So let's get out there and see just how far we can take it. Welcome to Human Edge Tech at Explorers Web.