Modern Travel

Once Upon A Time We Travelled Alone — Not Any More

How smartphones destroyed travel

I first started travelling in the late eighties. When I stepped on a plane, I was alone.

Not any more.

PING!

‘Are you there yet?’

‘No, I’m still on the runway!’

I turn my phone off, and take out a book.

But I can’t concentrate because some dick next to me is playing Nintendo. Except it isn’t Nintendo these days. It’s Candy Crush, and the guy's jabbing his iPad like he’s trying to punch holes in a wall.

I long for the days when you could smoke on a plane, and the cabin crew brought you free food and booze. Now you’ve got to sit up straight in the stiff seats, sip your pre-foamed cappuccino, and wait for everyone to access the onboard Wi-Fi like crack addicts reaching for their pipes.

PING!

PING!

PING!

Old Communication

Didn’t you love the lack of communication in the old days?

When you had to physically find a phone booth in the street. Then decipher how to use those international phonecards that required an incredibly long number followed by some strange code like *13 #*76*00. If you got it wrong, you ended up speaking to someone in Taiwan. Credit gone.

Or finding an internet café that didn’t run on generators and actually had a genuine internet connection. And wasn’t run by some café owner stealing your passwords, and charging you $10 for the trouble.

Or perhaps you remember writing a letter to your heartbroken girlfriend back home? Making sure the local post office issued you with the correct postage, so your precious letter didn’t end up in Gabon.

Even the cell phone I did have in the late nineties I rarely used as the calls and texts were too expensive. And it was only useful as an alarm clock.

Good times, eh?

Now look at us.

Travelling Connected

Now we travel connected to Google.

You can switch your phone off. But how many of us do that. Even the hardcore globetrotters I know admit that travel without a phone these days is difficult.

Hotels, flights, trains and buses will soon all be ticketless — if they aren't already. Your phone as vital as the traveller's cheques and hard currency we all used to carry.

Leave home without it, and you could be stranded with a wallet full of useless dollars and a Mastercard.

‘Sorry mate, we only accept Google or Apple Pay!’

Being Alone

I studied in France in 1993, and for that whole year, I almost forgot the UK existed. My only reference to my home country was flicking through a copy of The Times a tourist had left in a café.

When I taught English in Poland in 2001, I only learnt of the 9/11 attacks two days after it happened. I’d been in bed with flu, and with no TV or internet, I had no idea the world was on the brink of Armageddon.

Conclusion

Giving up smoking was hard. But giving up modern technology is even harder.

I remember a time when a pack of Camel and a ragged copy of The Times was good company for the evening. Now I have a smartphone that pings and tells me everything I want to know.

It doesn’t give me lung cancer, but it sure as hell pisses me off.

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