On September 11, 2001, at 8:00 a.m., I boarded a plane bound for Chicago with a continuing segment to Westchester. I was then working for a food ingredient manufacturer and I was calling on a new account. The job was another in a string of jobs that began and ended nowhere until I realized I was put on this earth to write.
As the United Airlines flight was somewhere between Omaha and Chicago, the pilot got on the intercom and announced that the FAA had declared an air emergency. We were ordered down to the nearest airport, which happened to be back to Omaha.
No one on the plane much reacted. There had been many problems with the air traffic control “grid” during that time period. My fellow passengers and I assumed the grid had gone down.
We landed and the rest was history. However, what struck me was a little detail that has become a life changing, earth changing phenomenon.
The Cell Phone
We carried flip-phones back in the day. They were, by and large, sales accessories. They carried little more importance than my other work tools. We didn’t text, we didn’t take selfies, we didn’t use them to trade stocks, play games, order groceries or bet on sports.
When the plane landed, precisely when the plane landed, I would estimate that 95 percent of the usually hidden cell phones rang out. Desperate relatives, friends, co-workers called us:
“I was so worried!”
“Thank God you’re OK!”
“Didn’t you hear what happened?”
The technology, once a business tool, had been launched into cyberspace on steroids. In that moment I knew nothing would ever be quite the same. Say what you want about Bin Laden, but he indirectly launched a trillion, several trillion dollar phenomenon.
Sarasota to Denver
How do we assess the impact of the cell phone over the past 20 years? I can’t. It is too big for me. I don’t write or think that way.
My hair (what is left of it) has gone gray; I have wrinkles in unwanted places; my arthritis tells me that my joints have gone kaput. Maybe 30 years from now, a social scientist or psychologist or gray-haired, wrinkled Millennial (and yes, that will also come), will write a series of cell phone reflections.
Nevertheless, on my recent trip from Sarasota to Denver, returning home from a wonderful, five-day respite, I had the “privilege” of sitting next to two, Millennial women absolutely absorbed, indeed hypnotized within their cellphone technology. One was “with me” from Sarasota to Charlotte and the other from Charlotte to Denver. I would estimate one to be about 30 and the other 18.
The older was a rather self-absorbed soul, intent on being the first off of the plane. She spent odd minutes, here and there, on her cell phone. To her frustration (we were in row 30), she insisted on rushing past me to hurry off the plane to make a connection an hour after landing. However, by the time I unbuckled myself and she scooted around me, she had no choice but to wait as the aisle filled with people. I found it to be rather amusing.
The other woman (aside from reading her Harry Potter book for 5 minutes) spent 3 hours and 10 minutes on her cell phone. She was switching from TikTok to Instagram to Twitter and back again. She played games, took selfies, sent texts, and was so mesmerized by the technology, if she could have crawled inside the digital device, I think she would have done so.
Of course, I have traveled many, many times over the past 20 years, domestic and international, but this time I was amazed at the hypnotic “cell phone effect,” and the degree to which most of the travelers have become so cut-off and self-centered. They see nothing except straight ahead; they rarely engage and are much more comfortable on their devices than having anything to do with a stranger.
There is no joy of traveling, no exploration of others along a route, no meaningful interaction on the journey to the destination. Travelers have now become strangers when travel was once a shared experience.
I wonder where we are all headed? Perhaps, to where we all start. It frightens me.