Part I: What Has Technology Done to Better Travel?
Remember the days when booking a flight across the country required a trip to the travel agent’s office, some back and forth discussion, and ultimately an arm and a leg in ticket costs?
Thanks to digital technology, those days are long gone. The past 50 or 60 years have done wonders for the travel industry; as new technology has begun to saturate the market to the point of total ubiquitousness, our lives–and our travel experiences–have improved tenfold.
Changing How We Travel
While the days of inflight lobster meals, reclining seats and smoking sections may be largely in the past, other amenities like personal TV screens, wifi connectivity and flight tracking have replaced them tenfold.
New technology has not only changed the ways we travel, it’s completely revolutionized the entire in-flight experience from top to bottom. While the amount of legroom on flights has been reduced to a less-than-stellar 30 or so inches, some may not even notice their legs falling asleep thanks to the in flight entertainment options on most commercial airlines.
Even outside of what’s offered on a flight, the digitization of entertainment means you have an entire library of your favorite books, magazines and periodicals at your fingertips in addition to the nearly unlimited supply of music.
New Methods & Modes
For decades people have imagined what the future of travel would look like. Flying cars, of course, were dreamt of for years and years and years before largely being determined to be out of the realm of possibility. Other dreams of future travel like people shooting across the country in air tubes was, surprisingly, not the strangest of the “what might the future of travel look like” illustrations of pre 21st century predictions.
The man who has become a beacon of technological advancement, Elon Musk, has announced that his recent endeavor at SpaceX, Hyperloop is underway. As it turns out, perhaps low pressure, high speed tube travel is the future of getting from San Fransisco to Los Angeles in a half an hour. While technological advancements like the Hyperloop has yet to come to complete fruition, organization insiders anticipate that people will be firing around the country in pressurized, wheel-less Hyperloop trains by the year 2020.
The Who, The When, And The How Much
The digitization of travel and introduction of new technology hasn’t just changed the accommodations we’re given when we travel or even the modes through which we traverse the country, but also who it is that’s doing the traveling.
Technology has effectively streamlined the entire travel process, particularly for the young people of today who are so intimately connected to the technology around them. No longer do travelers have to rely on a linear stepped communication process–traveler to travel agent, travel agent to airline, airline to travel agent, travel agent back to traveler (and that’s just for airline booking)–the entire process from purchasing your tickets to printing them out to booking your hotel has gone digital.
Some of these advancements open up numerous options to the average traveler that haven’t formerly been possible. The creation and subsequent torrid takeoff of AirBnB has given younger people the opportunity to not only explore more of the world, but to do so earlier, cheaper, and more efficiently.
New Destinations?
The most exciting aspect of futuristic travel technology doesn’t lie in what travel can offer us or how it’ll get us there but instead where it’ll be getting us. Elon Musk and his aforementioned aerospace manufacturer SpaceX is pushing the boundaries of travel before our very eyes.
While quick vacations to Mars or the Moon might not be on the immediate horizon for Musk and the rest of SpaceX, it’s entirely possible that in a matter of years you and your loved ones might be able to spend a week or two vacationing in the shadow of the Apollo 11 landing site.