Here's a story that illustrates well the time we're living in. (The picture, from Pravda, shows Indian and Pakistani nuclear sites. Its meaning will become clear in due course.)

I had a meeting scheduled with a programmer for around 9 AM. I booted up my computer, and as soon as it came up Google Talk woke up with "hi" from Tariq Mustafa.

I immediately began trying to set up Tariq with my boss here in Atlanta, who was on his own IM connection, to get our meeting started. As I did so the doorbell rang, and in walked a co-worker, who promptly sat down at my home network to join in.

There was just one problem.

I thought the problem was that Tariq was on Google Talk and my boss was on Instant Messenger.

But that wasn’t the problem at all.

In fact, the programmer I was trying to work with was outside Delhi, India. We had a project we were working on together and needed to chat with my boss about it.

Tariq, on the other hand, is in Karachi, Pakistan. He’s a good guy, a source and a blogger. In fact, he was the one who turned me on to Google Talk.

But I didn’t have the right party for my boss. In fact, I didn’t have the right country.

I apologized just now to Tariq, via e-mail. My Indian partner came on via Windows IM a few minutes later, the same channel my boss was using, and we had our meeting. It was good. I was juggling conversations in meat space with two in virtual space, one half a world away.

But you know it’s 2005 when you can’t tell the difference between India and Pakistan.