As I type, my students are taking their final exam in our Computer class. I design the final exam so that the question portion is on a web page with a form (fill-in-the-blanks are text boxes, multiple choice is done with pull-down menus), which generates an email with the student’s answers. My email client (Eudora, by the way) is set to automatically check the email account every minute, though when I notice a student just finished (dancing hamsters appear on their monitor), I manually check the email, which arrives instantly.

The thing that just struck me is the fact that the server for the email is somewhere in the U.S. A student finishes the test here in Tokyo, Japan, sends the results to the U.S., and then I retrieve them from there, seconds later; the answers have traveled halfway across the world and back. It just strikes me as funny, one of those minor epiphanies concerning commonplace but things strange in usually-uncontemplated ways, like what happens every so often when I’m walking down the street somewhere and suddenly it dawns on me that I’m in Japan.