Travels in the Electronic Age

by Kathleen O'Brien

A rich language. A rich literature. You'll find, sir, that certain cultures expend on their vocabularies and syntax acquisitive energies and ostentations entirely lacking in their material lives. I suppose you could call us a spiritual people. ....Yes, it is a rich language, full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self deception - a syntax opulent with tomorrows. (Brian Friel, Translations)

I have just returned from a pilgrimage with my eighty-three year old mother to the birthplaces of her two dead husbands. Despite the emotional nature of the trip and the skeletons that fairly flew from the closet I was able to see with excitement how the countries of Ireland and Denmark maintain their cultural identities as they move into the electronic age.

When we arrived at Heathrow, an airport of absurd size and singular lack of soul, we had to cover miles of aisles, both moving and not, before finding ourselves in the Aer Lingus wing. There, we entered a cultural explosion. After passing a startlingly green waiting room we went through a tunnel which led to our gate. This tunnel had a stuttering voice filling it with poetry about fields and burrens and all manner of things foreign to the environment, which lifted us instantly out of the soulless airport into another world entirely. From there we took a moving sidewalk past huge digital photographs of Aer Lingus passengers identified by their names and addresses, that by optical illusion appeared to elongate as we passed till they looked like the faces of leprechauns.

Once on the plane there were more messages. The green seats were printed all over in handwriting of different styles with the poetry of Yeats, Wilde and Joyce, among others, in both Irish and English. For most of the trip to Shannon I found myself catching snatches of phrases that would disappear in the crease of a cushion. I read things like What we would throw away if we were not afraid, just as others might pick them up and moths like dancer's slippers...and like a rock in the sea... and above the wailing of the rain... In Irish, I recognized the word teaghlach which means family and cara which means friend. Even the light lunch of fat shrimp on red lettuce with pink mayonnaise, the raisin scone with Irish butter and the glass of Irish spring water spoke volumes.

We stayed near the town of Newmarket-on-Fergus in a 17th century castle on a lake with acres containing wooded walks, walled gardens, a hermit's cave and other delights. But despite its age, our room was equipped with an outlet compatible to my laptop and I noticed right away how gracefully the Irish have integrated the accoutrements of the electronic age into their environment.

Even when we went to my father's village of Miltown Malbay, a place with a population of about 800, we found that my cousin who runs the grocery store on the town's only street owned a computer and was on the internet, as was our taxi driver. I found it very revealing of both the Irish nature and their firm hold on their culture that these modern tools in no way interfered with the spirit that imbues the place. Everywhere - in the air that I breathed, in all growing things and even in the rocks that made up the drystone walls that stretched endlessly across the countryside - I sensed the same strong spirit that lives in the Irish people. And I began to see why Ireland has taken to the electronic age so naturally.

These are people who have lived for centuries with nothing but imagination. They are intimate with the immaterial. Cyberspace, for them, is easy to navigate. And they are natural communicators. Their's is a culture that is rich in both oral and literary traditions and because electronic communication is a wedding of the two, for the Irish, it is a truly beautiful marriage.

Ireland now supplies Europe with 60% of all business application software and 40% of all personal-computer packaged software. And as the economy strengthens, Ireland is losing its status as an emigrant nation and thousands of its own are returning home to take their places in the new prosperity.

There is poetic justice that Ireland's best must no longer be in exile and it is a testament to its cultural integrity that Ireland is able to offer the world the gift of its own individuality. The Irish have a history of breaking the rules and as we move swiftly into what appears to be a frighteningly uniform world society, this is a timely gift.

In contrast, Denmark has a long history of social democracy. Consensus is a way of life for the Danes. They believe in equality for all people and this belief is reflected even in the architecture. All the houses and buildings are within a story of each other in height. There are no displays of opulence. Education is the measure of a person and even on their gravestones their occupations accompany their names. Everything is orderly and in its place. The Danes do not make a show of their emotions or make eye contact with strangers on the street. There is understatement in their dress. Every inch of land is registered, as are the people. It is not possible for Danes to lose themselves because their social security is dependent on the knowledge of their address.

We came to Denmark to leave the remains of my stepfather's ashes in his former wife's grave at the cemetery of a 15th century leper's church near the town of Svenborg, four hours from Copenhagen. On the journey in the charter bus complete with television, music and a bathroom , we moved through a deeply cultivated landscape. The service at the church was performed by a Lutheran minister in the traditional long black cassock and Elizabethan collar. The cemetery was crossed by raked gravel paths separating neatly kept flat graves enclosed by uniformly low hedges. We then went to a smorgasbord with the thirty or so Danes who came for the funeral.

The Danish people are stoic and even though I knew there was much sorrow around the death of my stepfather, it was contained. They smoke a lot, and smoking is allowed in all public places. Even though there is strong evidence of ecological concern and conservation, smoking is the agreed upon exception.

Denmark is supremely Aryan and as a result the Danish passport is an extremely valuable one. They follow orders and keep in line. They are not known for deviance. Perhaps this conservatism is what makes them more than able and willing to use the electronic media while offering little to enhance it. I did not see the enthusiasm in Denmark that I had experienced in Ireland to make a cultural statement in communicating with the rest of the world. Maybe it is the reserved nature of the Danish people that prevents them from participating in what remains a largely anarchistic medium.

On our trip on the bus back to Copenhagen I watched a cold full moon rise over a flat landscape scattered with patches of snow while the instrumental version of "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" piped ironically through the music system.

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