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Air Head
How aviation made the modern mind
By Nathan Heller
The New Yorker
It was the Europeans, not the Americans, who first realized that the new technology could be marketed not simply as a way to transfer cargo and ordnance but as a privileged experience... “Jet” became in the sixties what “cyber” or “Web” was to a later decade: a prefix that could furnish anything with a cool gleam of futurism.
“Jet” became in the sixties what “cyber” or “Web” was to a later decade: a prefix that could furnish anything with a cool gleam of futurism.
With the potential to hold any business meeting with increasingly sophisticated cyber tools, the question of why travel at all is increasingly being raised.
But it seems to be part of our collective conscience about what it means to be a human being. While we are just getting over the shock of people paying 1/4 million dollars for low earth orbits, and corporations paying up to $65 million for a business jet, $35 million for a trip to a space station, now we have people signing up to spend $150 million to take a tourist trip around the moon (who knows what it will cost to land on the moon).
On the budget level, who doesn't get a little giddy about Norwegian's flights to Europe for $600-$800 round trip.
Modern fast and safe aviation has fostered a greater understanding that the world is all the same planet and that events half a world away are literally in our own back yard. Mass tourism also, as Rick Steves says, reduces ignorance and prejudice. For most of us that is a good result but to the warmongers and preachers of hate it is a long term disaster.
What, when it's at home, is the 'modern mind'? I'm afraid that mine may be old-fashioned, futuristic or anachronistic; but it's, by no-means, anarchistic
With the potential to hold any business meeting with increasingly sophisticated cyber tools, the question of why travel at all is increasingly being raised.
But it seems to be part of our collective conscience about what it means to be a human being. While we are just getting over the shock of people paying 1/4 million dollars for low earth orbits, and corporations paying up to $65 million for a business jet, $35 million for a trip to a space station, now we have people signing up to spend $150 million to take a tourist trip around the moon (who knows what it will cost to land on the moon).
On the budget level, who doesn't get a little giddy about Norwegian's flights to Europe for $600-$800 round trip.
true there is video conferencing that would seem to make business travel obsolete. however there are times when being there in person is the best way to go in business. sometimes that peronal touch is what is needed to keep a business relationship going.
Video conferencing would not work any better for business than it would for a poker game. Too many of the subtle signals are lost.
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