Middlebury —–> Burlington —–> Philadelphia —–> Toronto —–> Home. I find traveling exhausting. Although, I’m not especially neurotic, impatient, or scared of flying, I, like most people, dread the song and dance that flying has become. As I write this, I’m on my flight home to Toronto, I still have two hours before I arrive home, and I’ve already been traveling non-stop for eight hours. When I plan a trip, I basically just subtract two days that I deem travel days. Days that inevitably get bogged down by hours or taking off and putting back on my shoes, wandering through terminals, and sitting in my seat listening to my iPod and making small talk and uncomfortable eye contact. (I particularly enjoy watching my neighbors facial expression change as he realizes that he’s going to be squished next to a teenager for the next couple of hours).

When I was younger and would travel with my parents and younger brother, I always really enjoyed playing with my GameBoy. Flying essentially turned into a period of unrestricted Pokémon training for me. Given that my parents were reasonably strict with how much time I got to use ‘screens, I absolutely it. As I got older and outgrew my GameBoy, I started to rely on the screen in back of the seat in front of me for my entertainment on long flights. Recently though, I’ve been flying out of smaller and more obscure airports that don’t have the jumbo-jets with the expensive media systems.

Flying today really got me thinking about my media usage while traveling. Flying for many people has become one of the few times in their lives where they don’t have access to communications technology. For those few hours while we hurl around the globe in that metal box, we’re almost completely isolate – that was, until recently. The policy that prevents us from fully taking advantage of our electronics during flights was created during the later part of the twentieth century when planes were far more rudimentary. Since the rule’s inception however, technology has advantages to the point where planes aren’t really affected by conflicted signals. Now, Wifi is being offered on some flights: for a small fee of course. Although I think that the fact that I can buy Wifi but can’t use my phone while on board a flight is inherently stupid and contradictory, I also think that this policy change is just the next step in the further integration of technology into our lives. Although overall, I’m definitely in favor of this change in policy, I can’t help but think that I’m going to miss the random conversation I enjoy having with strangers. Although, I don’t think that technology kills conversation, I also don’t think that I’m going to be the only one guilty of bury myself deep in digital world as soon as I get internet access. Although I won’t try to fight progress, I’m definitely not going to stop saying hi to the people on my flight.

Although I don’t know the name of the girl who I’m sitting beside, I like her. She works in adversing, graduated from UOIT in 2010 and has a 40 minute drive home from the airport. Maybe I’ll see her around – probably not though.