In the Information Age, with constant connection to home and work, we've diluted what it means to experience someplace new. ( Henry Lin/First Light/Corbis )
Road-warrior hell: I get off a 15-hour flight from North America and turn on my BlackBerry at some Asian airport. Instead of focusing on the immediate environment and the ride into town, I am engrossed in the several dozen e-mails that piled up while I was en route, a third of which require a serious response, and one or two of which relay worrying news. As if that isn’t enough of a distraction: throughout all my journeys, because of the 12-hour time difference, each morning in Asia begins with a slew of e-mails from the East Coast, again requiring responses, again relaying crises to deal with. Wherever we are, we are all always available, and everybody knows it. The media tell us how lucky we are to live in the Information Age. I believe we have created a hell on Earth for ourselves.
Let me bore you with the old days: In the early 1980s, nobody had advance notice of my arrival anywhere. I’d fly to Addis Ababa to cover a famine, or to Sarajevo to cover the preparations for the Winter Olympics, armed with only about eight names and telephone numbers. Because I did not have to waste time sending e-mails back and forth for days to set up appointments, I had that much more time to read about the history and geography of the country to which I was headed. And you know what? When I arrived and dialed those numbers, about half the people on the list answered and were pleased to meet with me: after all, I had come all this way, completely dependent on their hospitality. And so hospitality was offered. And those people introduced me to other people. It was all so much more efficient then. Now, after corresponding for days with someone just to arrange a meeting, when you arrive at his office thousands of miles away, he answers some of your questions by referring you to a Web site.
I am not saying information is now harder to come by. I am saying the intensity of the experience of foreign places has been diluted. The real adventure of travel is mental. It is about total immersion in a place, because nobody from any other place can contact you. Thus your life is narrowed to what is immediately before your eyes, making the experience of it that much more vivid.
It isn’t just the landscapes that are overpowering, but the conversations, too. Real conversations require concentration, not texting on the side. The art of travel demands the end of multitasking. It demands the absence of bars on your smartphone when you are in a café with someone. That’s because travel is linear—it is about only one place or a singular perception at a time.
This article should be compulsory reading for all modern travellers. Read it at The Atlantic