Technology begins to limit our discoveries

As the world becomes smaller, is travelling tending towards becoming obsolete?

Popular reasons for an extended period of vagabonding usually boil down to discovering more about other cultures, and finding out about yourself.

The self-discovery part is still very much alive, but surely one day there is just going to be a global mish-mash of cultures that has dissolved into one?

It wasn’t so long ago that curious lads like Christopher Columbus (or was it Leif Ericson?) and Captain Cook were becoming the first white men to be seen in North America and Australia, respectively. They travelled for months, with many men and women losing their lives, as they were tossed about like bingo balls on the high seas. They were discovering cultures that had never been infiltrated before.

Fast forward 400 years to 1927, and it is the first passenger transatlantic flight. Jet-setting had begun. Add to that jet engines, television, mass immigration, the European Union, budget airlines, cheaper education, and more, and in only 80 years the world is a different prospect.

In most Westernised cities, there is a Chinatown. There are Little Havana’s and Little Italy’s. English is spoken at some level by 1/3 of the world’s population. Film and sports stars from America and Europe are recognised and mobbed in the Far East.

It is infinitely more acceptable for different cultures to mix and marry – that is a difference that took only thirty years.

Cheap travel has blurred the line between vagabonding as a period of self-discovery, and as a ‘just’ a trip that thousands of people, from students to elderly holiday-makers, embark on every year.

In one example, Paul Magee refers to Ayers Rock in his book From Here to Tierra Del Fuego, and comments about the:

“…mass of other pilgrims who, far from seeking ‘the sacred center of a rapidly developing settler cosmology’ visit the Rock for no other reason than the simple fact that it is there.’ “

Does the improved efficiency and accessibility of vagabonding water down the cultural journey of the vagabonder?

The international amalgamation has really only just begun, but how long until there is no culture for us to travel to explore?