In this interconnected, world-wide webbed, "globalized" era, countries, like real life persons, live under an avalanche of information. Pace in the "information society," and the amounts of raw data being spewed by innumerable "content generators," are such that even the keenest, most hard working information gatherers are hard pressed to keep up. On a national policy level, being up to date and exploiting the flow have become strategic demands policy makers ignore at their peril.

Greeks, for all the bragging of their professional politicians and other high visibility "opinion makers" to the contrary, are generally absent from most of the more sophisticated forms of interaction with the world at large. Both public and private sectors, with few isolated exceptions, have pitiful records in maintaining an active interest in -- to put it bluntly -- being informed. It is not only the generalized discomfort with computers or the Internet; this is just one manifestation of the problem. It is rather a baffling tendency to be consciously absent and invisible even in areas, where exchange of information takes place, that are vitally linked to one's chosen or assigned activity.

Naked-eye evidence of this tendency abounds. Anyone who has ever followed, with any consistency, Greek attendance and participation in international fora of any kind, for example, would be able to attest to permanent  Greek invisibility at such meetings. Local petty politics and parochial habits play a significant role in this state of affairs. Greece is full of miniscule fiefdoms, i.e. small special interest factions usually coalescing around an antediluvian "senior" figure, or other with political connections, who dominates "who comes and who goes" on top of controlling such critical processes as promotion, demotion, and budget allocation. As much as such a social scheme may strike one as impossible in this day and age, Greek realities "on the ground" have an uncanny ability to crash land even the most leather-necked of optimists.  

Today, being invisible, and hostile or disinterested toward information, comes at a huge cost. Being invisible also means being absent from promoting and defending one's own interests and aims. Fifty years ago, "critical" bulletins could take hours or, even, days to reach their intended recipients. Today, flash messages are delivered, literally, in a flash directly to the desktop. This tremendous time differential alone is enough to rout and pulverize those who believe they can survive in this world spread over three armchairs, sipping their dark coffee at leisure, and chatting blithely into a cell phone, while adversaries, but also "friends," remain visible, connected, and busy with pushing their point and advancing mutually supporting networks.

Is anybody listening?