How do satellite phones (and blogs) alter the travel experience?

I noticed I was quoted this week in Casey Kittrell's Travel Weekly piece, "Tools for the Trade: Staying in Touch on the Road", which explores the increasing availablility of rental satellite phones for travelers. The article also talks about other common forms of technology (such as cell phones, blogs and email) that have made it easier to stay in touch from the road.

Since few of the tangents covered in my initial email interview with Kittrell made it into the article, I'll share my expanded comments below. Feel free to post comments if you have opinions or experiences to share about the increasing "connectedness" of global travel.

Here's what I wrote to Kittrell in the interview:

"On the surface, the technological advancements of recent years (Internet ubiquity, satellite phones – even ATMs and iPods) have changed travel forever. They have made it easier to bring “home” with us, and easier for travel itself to become a nearly seamless extension of the lives we lead at home. To show how far things have come in the last decade, I can point out that during my recent travels across South America (fall 2003 and winter 2004) I was in much closer day-to-day contact with family and friends back home than during my 8-month 1994 van trip around the United States – even though I was physically much farther away from home.

"On one level these new technologies are great, since they break down the fears and barriers one encounters about getting out there and seeing the world. After all, how scary can, say, Asia be if your friend from down the street is posting ecstatic weblogs each week from places like Thailand and India and Iran? In this sense, the increased connectivity of the world makes it easier to get out there and experience the myriad opportunities travel offers. On that same token, however, these very technologies – if relied on too heavily – have a way of hamstringing one’s travel experience. As I say in my 2003 book Vagabonding, “the surest way to miss out on the genuine experience of a foreign place – the psychic equivalent of trapping yourself back at home – is to obsessively check your email as you travel from place to place.” Hence, in my book, I encourage travelers to ration their time in Internet cafes, and pursue direct experience as often as possible.

"Another drawback of technology in travel is that it is redefining the definition of adventure. I pose this question in my book: “Which experience will require more innovation and persistence -- buying into a guided expedition up some Andean peak (where you can eat freeze-dried turkey tetrazzinni along the way, and call your family via satellite phone from the summit), or lingering for a few weeks in some Bolivian village to learn a local craft without fully knowing the local language?” In this sense, true adventure these days is not a matter of physical efforts in rugged places (not when you carry a GPS, a sat phone, and space-age gear), but quieter, humbler journeys to those parts of the world where the locals don’t require such technology.

"This said, however, I don’t think what we are experiencing in the travel world is anything new. Travelers have always taken great pains to take “home” with them – from the ancient Romans who brought their silverware with them on pilgrimages to Greece 2000 years ago, to Moroccan Ibn Battuta obsessively seeking out the Muslim quarters of 14th century China, to the wanderers of the Hippie Trail 30 years ago, who ensured that 8-track tapes turned up in the markets of Kabul not too long after they debuted in the K-Marts of Canton, Ohio. In essence, everything we bring on the road as travelers – from our quick-dry zip-off safari-pants to our 10,000-song iPods to our medication-stuffed first-aid kits – ties us to home. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; one just has to realize that much of the thrill of travel comes in leaving home behind and making oneself vulnerable to the glorious chaos of life overseas.

"Is direct experience possible within this net of comfort and communication? Yes, it probably is. But direct experience – which, as Michael Crichton says is one of the true pleasures of travel – is far easier to find when one sets the iPod and the sat phone aside and quietly takes in one’s surroundings.

"A final question is how blogging is “desensitizing” people at home to travel as it competes with other entertainment options. As Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham wrote back when the Internet was still quite new, “the constant [media] viewer learns to accept the images on the screen as metaphors, all of them weightless and without consequence, all of them returning as surely as the sun – commercials, other press conferences, other football seasons – demanding nothing of the audience except the duty of ritual observance.” Similarly, seeing Bob from down the street blog about the wonders of Tehran can certainly desensitize and de-exoticize distant lands. But, unlike commercials or football seasons, we all have the option of being participants in travel – and blogs only underscore how enjoyable and relatively easy this is to do. So, while blogs may desensitize us to travel they also encourage us to travel – to break out from behind the veneer of media and take part in the world for ourselves. And for this reason I’d say travel blogs are great."