We do not often head out, into the wilderness any more.

As one friend assured me, as she released me from a friendly goodbye embrace, “We can still talk on facebook all the time.”

The meta-existence that people of my generation conduct in the online world drastically reduces the impact that long distances had on friendships in the past. Even somewhere as distant as the top of a mountain or a country on the other side of the world, a person can still be in touch every day with friends back at home – participating lively in group jokes, observing the evidence of hedonistic nights out and providing friendly observances on every day occurrences. It might not be as satisfying as having a quick pint and a catch up with a friend in the afternoon before work, but it's certainly a damn site better than goodbye meaning goodbye for long periods of time – with only the occasional letter to provide a wonderful but limited, just out of date window into the everyday lives of loved ones. The letter is a wonderful means of communication but it is easily forgotten that, lacking extensive hours of leisure time a la the Victorian upper classes to craft finely wrought, elegant communiques, it's simply not practical to serve as ones sole avenue to friends and family. And quite besides that, upkeeping worthwhile correspondence with 30 or 40 or however many people one wishes to be in regular communication with eliminates any time for the pursuit which caused one to leave in the first place! Far better that we conserve our efforts in this field for a select worthwhile few for whom it is also an enjoyable and rewarding activity – but what of the other people that it is simply unimaginable to consider growing apart from?

Considering this, it is fortunate that mobile phones, text messages, email and facebook mean that we are part of a constant flow of information between ourselves, friends and our wider extended circle – with transmission of knowledge (who kissed who last night, who has Glastonbury tickets and who is suffering from a broken heart) on an almost instantaneous level, accessible by those who choose to seek it. Layers of privacy surround communications to differing extents, of course – think about the different people who can access, say, a public twitter post, facebook wall comment, private blog post, forum private message, email – but regardless of levels of encryption, these masses of information all exist as part of one huge mass, existing geographically nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Someone told me once that ants, part of sophisticated hive societies in which everyone must play it's role as part of one unified greater purpose, send their “youths” individually out into the world to explore – alone, distinct for the first time from the colony which has. and will define their very existence, from prior to conception to after death. The idea is presumably that, by having time to freely pursue their own goals and aims, the individual ant will eventually return satisfied to the colony and settle down happily to become a breeder/soldier/worker – or while out in the big wild world (possibly halfway through a gap year program working with underprivileged children in Asia, one assumes) undergoes some kind of spiritual transformation or experience and realises that happiness can be better found in the homely life, en-swathed in the bosom of the mother queen and alongside hundreds and thousands of brothers and sisters. Obviously, the story is intended to suggest certain parallels are drawn between the ant and the young human traveler, heading out into the world in an attempt to search for a meaning inherent in life and decode the supposed signifiers of the universe. I have no idea whether the ant story is even remotely grounded in fact, but it serves in itself to provide a layer of meaning and some kind of quasi-mystic animalistic context for the travels undertaken by so many people of our generation, in the search for something unknown – providing meaning and justification for the quest for meaning and justification, if you will.

So when I move, as I am currently in the process of doing, to Heidelberg in southwest Germany – a place I have visited only once before, speaking a language I am far from capable with – I have no idea whether or not, at the end of the year, I will return to the UK placated by my experience and willing to join the ranks of the breeders, soldiers or workers as part of our colossal colony. I do not know whether I shall have come across some hidden truth or layer of meaning which my youth has shaped my life into a quest for – or whether I will learn only the irrelevance of such truths. The only thing I can be sure of as I go forth into the wilderness, armed with my laptop and camera and a mild penchant for web 2.0 exhibitionism, is that regardless of where I end up – I will still be a part of the hive.