Miri airport, Sarawak.

I’m sitting at a table in a well-known brand of global coffee shop, about to go cyber-incommunicado for 3 weeks in the heart of the Mulu National Park, exploring more of the world’s greatest caves.

It’s a novel experience these days – there’s no internet connection, no GSM network and, as we are based in a steep gorge, a satphone connection for only about 3 minutes at a time, if you’re lucky, as a satellite passes directly overhead. We haven’t got one anyway, so that’s irrelevant on this trip.

It’s such a difference from my first trip here in 1980. Then it was a 3 day journey on ferry and outboard powered-canoe to reach the Park, the great brown Baram River meandering through seemingly endless forest – now it’s a 40 minute plane ride over cleared land and palm plantations.. Then our base camp was a simple wooden structure with a tin roof – now on the same location is the 180 bed Royal Mulu Resort. Then, a trip into Deer Cave, the largest single cave passage in the world, was a rare privilege – now hundreds of tourist go there to watch the spectacular evening flight of bats (and there is even a live webcam, focused on their roost).

In those days, when I set out on an expedition, work was left behind as a distant memory – now I’m accessible online right up to the Park HQ and this netbook will come with me so that I can exploit every useful moment (assuming we have fuel for the generator!)

It’s a shrinking world, in time, space and diversity. I’m not sure that it’s better for it.

From a conference on flexible working

A presentation from Peter James of the Sustainable IT initiative

Robert Mannings, the BT futureologist

The growth in interest in what are [now] called Cloud applications is really quite extraordinary, just do a search in Google Trends for the term ‘cloud computing’ and look at the exponential rise in enquiries. I’m very interested in hearing about any such applications so that I can promote them via the Grid Computing Knowledge Transfer Network to illustrate the way in which new technical infrastructures are changing business practices and promoting new working models. So, if you know any, please add a comment to this blog and let me know what they are, what they offer and a URL, please.

I’m off to Borneo tomorrow to go caving for a month, exploring the greatest caves on Earth. As I like to say, cave exploration is the only true exploration frontier remaining on the planet. Using remote sensing techniques you can see what you are letting yourself in for anywhere else on the Earth’s surface, including below the sea or even in space. (And the proof of this, if you need it, is the availability on google earth of sub-sea detail. Of course, google earth is, itself, an example of a cloud application…)

In caves, you can’t – every bend in the passage represents the truly unknown. (And being below ground means that you can’t get email or the web – bliss!)