Oh dear. The inevitable has happened: someone’s come up with a way for us to use our mobiles when on the plane.
“I’M ON THE PLANE”
Next up: ‘mobile free areas’ on planes, and stickers telling people to keep their voices down.
I think it’s sad, to be honest. Planes were one of those places where you could just relax a little, without the pressure of email and phone messages. I’m going to be posting in more detail about this another time, but a good friend sent me a fantastic article (see below) the other day by an English Professor at a US university, who is worried about how much his students are stressed by the constant demands of the infinite possibilities technology now give us. A quote in it from Thoreau came to mind as I read the news above:
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
“I’M ON THE PLANE.” Precisely.
It’s 19 pages. You’ll have to cut some time out to read it properly. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to do that these days, and skim the surface of learning; no time to plumb depths.
