At the New Yorker, Nathan Heller asks whether or not air travel has become obsolete in a world connected by the Internet and social media (and decides that no, it really hasn’t):
When physical travel cedes to digital exploration, a certain style of discovery falls away. You can explore on your phone; you can explore on the Web. You can stumble on fascinating things. The Internet is a vast, interactive museum engineered by curators and augmented by other visitors’ preferences. Look at this! it says. Click here! Come down this passageway! It lacks physical constraints, but also circumstantial contiguities; all points of passage through it have to be, in some sense, primed. You cannot casually ask about the background image of a Web page and be directed to a secret circus a short walk from where you stand. The stories you uncover through your smartphone are stories, basically, asking to be found.
