Every time I travel, I am amazed at how easy we have it compared to previous generations. I started my morning in Indianapolis, Indiana and am eating dinner in Palo Alto, California.
One hundred fifty years go it would have been a four-week treacherous journey. One hundred years ago, it would have been a four-day journey by train. Today, it took me four hours to span the same distance through the air.
Fifty years ago, I would have been in the middle of farms and fruit orchards. Today, I am surrounded by thousands of square miles of homes and businesses in what is now Silicon Valley.
Twenty-five years ago, I would have used a travel agent to book my flight weeks in advance, stayed in a hotel that I knew nothing about, kept in touch using pay phones, and been “out of pocket” for the entire week
.Today, I used flight tickets and checked into a pre-purchased hotel room I booked online a week prior to my trip, used my cell phone all day (to surf the internet, make phone calls, text my colleagues, & take a picture of a bank of eight very lonely pay phones in Chicago O’Hare Int’l Airport) - all the while staying connected to my friends, colleagues, and family.
Ten years ago, I would have used the AAA Trip-Tik(c) and been amazed to have a GPS navigational device in my rental car. Today, I was annoyed by the in-car navigation system’s lack of touch screens and the limited options to customize how I viewed the route.
Five years ago, I would have been searching for WiFi hot spots. Today, I saw a charter bus that was a WiFi hot spot.
And, those are just the things I can think of off the top of my mind as I write and post this blog in the Apple Store on University Avenue in Palo Alto.
What do you find amazing about travel in the digital era? What do you think will be amazing to us in the next 3-5 years?