Two days ago at work, about 11:30 am, I received an iChat instant message from Erinn. Erinn is in China, working with a group from Huntington University that is teaching teachers of English in Zhuhai City, a major city in China. It's a very neat opportunity. Erinn worked in my office until last November, when she accepted a high school teaching job.

Anyway, Erinn said some plans had changed, and she needed to do a presentation. But she was having trouble gathering photos for a PowerPoint presentation. She just needed some photos of typical American sports--basketball, baseball, football, soccer, golf, etc. She tried Google images, but the vaunted Great Firewall of China wouldn't let her find anything. Evidently American sports photos are considered enemies of the state. She had been trying for a good while, but in vain.

So she was wondering if I could help her out. Could I use my graphics resources to send her some suitable photos. I have a good library of photos on my computer, and among them were some sports photos, which I quickly located. I dropped a football photo into the iChat window and hit the Return button. A few seconds later, the image having appeared on her screen, she responded, "Ooh, that's a nice one." Or something like that.

I dropped in photos of people playing other sports--basketball, golf, hockey, even skateboarding. All got through. Amazing. I drag a photo into a message field, send it, and almost immediately it appears on Erinn's screen on the other side of the world. Sometimes technology can be radically cool.

"It's been a pleasure circumventing cyber tyranny," I told her as we ended our chat. And I imagined Chinese cyberspooks, frustrated by their inability to stifle iChat, scrambling black helicopters and dour sunglassed men in black SUVs to Erinn's IP node.

Apple iChat. Think Subversive.