 |
I don't even know how many times I've made the trip to Prague.
This is the plane that would take me from Seattle as far as Amsterdam in
one
quick 9-hour hop across the top of the planet through the thin bitter cold
air at 39,000 feet. Who knows, maybe I'd even flown on this selfsame
A330 already.
Sea-Tac
seemed like a madhouse but one security checker told me it was only slightly
busy--a 45,000 passenger day when the
most he'd seen was 64,000. Still, the lines were long and I got to gate S9
just as they were calling my row. Flying used to mean at least
perfunctory conversations with your
seatmates
but now with on-demand video the cabin was quiet the whole way as even people
traveling
together stared silently into their screens, earphones firmly in place. Can't
say I miss the smalltalk all that much and nothing makes a flight go
quicker than watching 3 movies, but I still get the feeling that our ability
to interact with one another is slipping away and worldview
is
becoming more homogenized through continual exposure to mass enter-
tainments. Instead of learning from each other
we
just recline our seats and settle in for the lowest common denominator. |
