Many years ago now, when I was in the military and based in Canberra, we were required to carry out Officer of the Day (although they called them Duty Officer because it was a rotation with all three services) out at Navy Office HQ.

As Duty Officer, you had to stay there overnight and be on call for any alert, signal or information that came in through the night that needed action. All officers were on this list on nightly rotation.

Some liked it, some didn’t but we all had to do it. You’d know in advance when you had duty so you could plan accordingly. At times, you couldn’t make it so you had to find people to go in your place.

I was nonplussed about duties because it was something we all had to do. It was part of the job.

It was only an inconvenience if you were on duty on weekends however, overall, I had mild levels of anxiety when I was on. I slept lightly and on alert. You didn’t want to be phoned by police to tell you that one of our members had a car accident and ended up in hospital or worse, died. Thankfully I never had anything serious except for some drunken sailors, or cadets from the nearby Defence Academy.

You also never wanted to ever get a SUBMISS or SUBSUNK signal. That’s when submarines went missing. If anything serious happened, you had this folder with loads of checklists and phone numbers and you worked your way down it, waking and alerting.

I remember enjoying the duty at Navy Office HQ in particularly. I didn’t get much sleep through the night of course because they had this massive media room with many screens high up on the wall. This was the day before flat screens and Netflix. I could watch all the news and reports around the world. Sitting on the swivel chair in this semi circular room, arms outstretched on the panel in front of me, i could pretend to take charge of all the news around the world. All I needed was a white cat by my side and the image was complete.

Today I was reminded of that when I went into the office. I had THREE screens to do my work. It was a tad disconcerting. I’m someone who keeps minimal tabs open to do my work with two screens at the most and here I was sitting in front of three GIANT in-your-face screens.

I worked on my laptop (its screen is huge enough) but on the other two, I had BBC, ABC and Reuters live feeds to get updates as they occurred with the situation in Ukraine. Not to mention my mobile phone nearby scanning my Twitter feeds.

For a moment it sas like I was back on duty.

It was interesting to see the time lag and the themes coming through about similar times. At times I do feel that just getting the Australian version or our focus of events is giving me only one perspective – the wrong one. I don’t know why I need more newsfeeds because to be fair, this entire Ukraine and Russia situation is making me nervous but at the same time, I’m riveted to be watching history being made. We are observers to a new and frightening kind of information battle.

So my three screens today reminded me of a time in my life, a simpler time where the enormity and the importance of having up to date news feeds and information channels for decision making didn’t quite “gel” with me back then as it does now. I wonder what the past me would have thought of the current me, sitting in a coworking space in Melbourne many years later having more data feeds and information channels than I did back then. And, having them on my phone too.

There’s absolutely no way I would have been able to comprehend the shift in our lives that technology brings – the good and the bad.

There’s no point to this post. I’m just rambling because the three screens made me think back to that time. I’ve been thinking about the past a lot in recent times. Mainly thinking about the value of hindsight and how we change as people and society when our environments are threatened by real or perceived threats.

(Later… this morning I checked Twitter to see that a Ukrainian newspaper has published all the personal data and information of Russian soldiers).