I'm on a flight from Dallas to Philadelphia right now. Yes, right now. I'm typing this from the plane using American's new gogo internet service since the Admirals Club gave me a free pass. I know this has been around for a little while on certain planes, but this is the first time I've been on a flight and have had a chance to test it out. It isn't really all that exciting, but I am wondering how this will change the world of business.
I have been flying a lot lately (I'm on a 6 flights in 7 day streak right now) and have actually really been enjoying the opportunity to take a nap during the day, catch up on more in depth reading and make some progress on some of our bigger writing objectives. And I've churned out a couple of killer slides that probably wouldn't have made their debut without some kind of disconnection from the real world. So here I am re-connected to Facebook, skyping with co-workers, updating my blog, ping-ponging on email and not really doing anything particularly important.
I'm feeling quite a bit of ambivalence about this. As long as they have rules that ensure people "do no harm to their neighbor's disconnection", hence AA's rules around not viewing porn, not video conferencing and not making calls, I suppose it can be useful to be connected and I just have to be more personally disciplined on how I use my time. Isn't it sad I secretly hope they charge by the minute so that I have to be thoughtful about how long I'm online like when I'm on vacation typing from an internet cafe?
P.S. The coffee sucks. But thank goodness for exit rows.
Monday, September 14, 2009
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3 comments:
The interesting about this post is the contunious 'connnection' with the world. Do we ever disconnect anymore. I would think that my hobbies would give me the chance to disconnect but then I see myself using my phone to check the path of thunderstorms while I play golf or post a picture of a fish I caught on Facebook.
No where to hide anymore!
I secretly hope that they keep charging fees for internet service on flights and never make it free and available so that people like me who cannot stay awake on airplanes have an excuse not to "connect" while on a flight :).
The value of being disconnected is woefully underrated.
Sometimes I contemplate if it would be worth $500 to book a same-day round trip from Chicago to LA, just to have 8 hours of disconnected, focused, productive 'thinking and working' time. Nobody can call me, nobody can IM me, it's just me and my to-do list.
Here's a fun take on this same subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXStPqhLmIk
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