20,000 Miles Over the Sea
I am sitting here at an inn in Canberra, Australia, a snug place which has gone mostly unchanged since the 1800s (according to its historical landmark certificate). Outside is a dismal shower, a few degrees shy of a blizzard and in full defiance of the word “August” which I see on a nearby calendar. The pub’s fireside offers welcome relief, a comfort deep in the human race: warmth and dryness, aged timbers set aglow by coals glowing like vibrant memories, a bellyful of ale. It is a universal contentment. There is not a slice of humanity that would not at least tolerate being here, excluding Southern Baptists.
Far from the universality of this moment are my last 48 hours, which began in the humid green hills of Ohio some 10,000 miles distant. Distance is meaningless, though, when airliners are concerned. We may fly as fast as gods but we will never have their presence of mind. There have been whole civilizations that could not imagine the endless possibilities of transglobal flight, like returning home from Australia to see the demolition derby at the Knox County Fair.
Such was my goal in striking out for home from Sydney nearly 20 days ago, westering across the Pacific and then the great heartlands of America. I succeeded, arriving in time to see several Geo Metros crash into each other as well as a monster school bus pop a titanic wheel off its axel. I ate a Porkette sandwich, a delicious sausage patty which defies any attempt at differentiation from other sausage patties save that it is made by old ladies with country drawls that sound like home. And there is also the spectacle of the long-legged highschool beauties of rural Knox County in full spring bloom, dressed in impeccable American Eagle fashion (apexes of youth, of which every future picture will only be a wistful reference) — ignored by their boyfriends who wear either stained sleeveless tanks or checkered gingham shirts tucked into denim, in both cases wearing baseball caps. These fellows believe there is no sense of urgency, that the summer of 2017 is endless. I do, too: in their memories. It is all a scene as sure as the seasons; only the year changes.
Some people were surprised that I chose to use my United miles-hoard on a flight back to Ohio. I guess I can’t think of a better place to go than home; most travel epics have been about coming there so it seemed rational at the time. And any excuse to spend quality time on a Boeing 787-9 is a good excuse. It is one of the few constructions we use that remind me that technology may be worth it after all, that merit an allusion to Jules Verne’s master tale of an impossible voyage powered by genius.
Flight, to me, qualifies as perhaps the summit of technology. Anything more would seem to make us, not the world, smaller. The day we can board a rocket, powered purely by Richard Branson, and spring about the world in an hour will be the end of travel. Like everything in the digital age, it will have ceased being inconvenient. The investment will be gone. Flight courts this boundary, it is true; 15 hours is a mere second compared to old sea voyages. But it is just enough time to feel kinship with the Polynesian seafarers who once navigated their canoes on the vast oceans below, using only the stars. If you fly in the economy cabin, some airlines will still kindly simulate their hardships for you.
I admit the line between most 21st-century technologies and technologies I actually like, such as steam engines, distilleries or coke furnaces, is tenuous at first glance. Both are steps in the march of progress. But I think this the first century in which we expend so great an effort — perhaps more than began the industrial revolution — for really so little objective gain. The transcontinental railroad turned months of mortal danger into days of relative comfort; the airplane did the same but with days into hours. Facebook allows you see how your friends are more successful than you without the embarrassment of asking them.
The last twenty years have allowed us to do many already-fast things faster and many new things without precedent, such as cryptocurrency. But we cannot seriously say it has overcome any fundamental human challenge. Speed and ease of communication, perhaps; but the recent election should persuade even the most progressive of Silicon Valley residents that there is value in letting ideas stew about in long form for a few days.
The continuing promise of the digital age — the rebirth of individuality — falls flat. The Apple 1984 commercial is now a bitter irony; look about you in any public location and you will see an iPhone, as unchangeable, as unownable by their owners as any IBM-issued device. Apple pushes updates, upgrades and features like English kings push taxes. We are owned by our property. It is the era of user testing, frictionless websites, funnels into a checkout page and the tyranny of social-media-powered narcissists with little good to show for it save Gangham Style (the apex of our generation). We are at a strange point in history where we may enjoy the same things anywhere in the world but hardly anything from five years ago; it is the opposite problem most of humanity has experienced. We are foreigners simply by staying in place.
Therein lies the subtle glory in the airliner, which makes faraway places merely accessible, while the Social Age makes them identical. Far from a future of niche markets and uniqueness — the reality of a hundred years ago and every century before it — modernity is taking us into era of sameness through widely-available variety. No matter where I am in the world, I am subjected to the horrors of “Despacito” as though it were the national anthem, and this will be replaced with a more annoying song whenever Beyoncé can be bothered to lay down the vocal tracks.
But more worrisome is that things which are objectively good — Jack Daniel’s, for instance — are also available everywhere. I saw bottles of it just today alongside a beer brewed 250 miles away from my home, all the way on the wrong side of the world. There is something not quite right about this, a strange sort of theft. I don’t object to the presence of Jack Daniel’s here in Canberra, but it should require a quest or a blood sacrifice. I suppose an Amazon Prime account is somewhat like the latter.
Thankfully, they have not figured how to deliver the Knox County Fair by drone or freighter. Demolition derbies and Porkette sandwiches may yet require a 30-hour voyage across ocean and continent.
