![]() Polo’s book reawakened Europe to the possibilities of international trade and expansion, and became a text that heavily influenced the age of discovery that dawned in Europe two centuries later. His book became a best seller, spreading throughout the Italian Peninsula in a matter of months-a remarkable feat in an age before Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1439. (See also: Silk for horses: History of the Silk Road.) ![]() ![]() He wrote of fabulous things, but also of everyday matters relating to commerce. Although fantastic legends and rumors from such far-off places had filtered through to Europe on the numerous east-west trading routes of the Silk Road, Polo’s eye brought them alive in a new way. The names of the places they traveled-Hormuz, Balkh, and Kashgar-became for Europeans indelible parts of a new mental map of the world. It tells the story, beginning in 1271, of an odyssey undertaken by a trio of Venetians, who traveled through extraordinary lands and into places where few Christians had ever been, all the way to the court of the Mongolian emperor, Kublai Khan. Gorgeously rendered, the Bodleian copy contains what many scholars consider to be an authoritative text. The Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, holds one of the earliest versions, dating from about 1400. You can jump into a conversation or answer a question or laugh at a joke that someone told five hours ago.” Unlike past group texts, Miller also notes, there’s “no figuring out someone’s intention or tone, because you see it and you hear it and you feel it.Please be respectful of copyright. ![]() “It speaks to Marco Polo’s ability to make you feel like you didn’t miss the window to talk to somebody. “My friend, who is a healthcare hero, working as a primary ICU doctor during COVID.I’ve never been in touch with her more,” Miller says. Hadley Miller, a Pilates instructor and mom of two in Scarsdale, New York, is using Polo to stay close to friends in different countries and time zones, with totally opposing schedules to hers. “But you don’t have to worry about the other person being free in that moment.” “It means that you can communicate your thoughts and you know they’re going to be heard,” Grace Loughborough, a nonprofit staffer and mother of a one-year-old in Newport, Rhode Island, who joined Polo shortly after social distancing began, told me. The asynchronicity of Polo makes it feel like FaceTime, but at your leisure, allowing friends to record and share heart-to-hearts without interruption. (“2x me” is a frequent, self-aware refrain in my Polo groups, when someone finds themselves getting long-winded in the middle of a message.) “I like Marco Polo because you can decide when you want to hear people’s messages, and also you can fast-forward people”-a reference to the “2x” button that lets you speed up your friends’ videos, a bonus when you’re playing catch-up. “I don’t like FaceTime because you’re not really in control of it-someone can just FaceTime you,” Amy Poehler told her Polo buddy, Seth Meyers, on Late Night last week. So began an ongoing, almost month-long virtual conversation in which four of us, all living in different parts of the country, have shared a daily blotter of our quarantine lives with each other via private Marco Polo messages (akin to a “video walkie talkie,” as early adopter Ice-T described it). It felt like the 2020, mid-pandemic version of a Real World confessional-except only for our close friends’ eyes. But for levity, she showed us her baby, who was blowing bubbles, and a goblet of red wine. She was lying on the floor of her child’s playroom wearing no makeup and a hoodie, already lonely and missing her normal routine. I’ve been in a very dark place,” a dear college friend said in her first Marco Polo message to our group in mid-March, as life as we knew it began to close in on itself. Luckily, in the early days of social distancing, Marco Polo came into my life. The idyllic, performative quality of Instagram doesn’t always match the moment, either. Twitter is one big anxiety spiral (even more than usual). Social media has been feeling off in the time of COVID-19.
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