THE COLUMNIST
I
fly long haul at
least once a month.
I don’t enjoy sitting
in a cramped
seat, fretting
about deep vein
thrombosis. Nor am I
a fan of breathing recycled
air that annihilates my
immune system. But I do
love several hours of more-
or-less uninterrupted me
time. Time to sleep, time
to watch movies, time to
think, time to write.
Without the constant distraction of the
internet, I find a little window seat to be an
extremely productive hot desk. And though
long flights are physically draining, the
headspace is mentally restorative.
But that is all changing thanks to the
insidious creep of in-flight wi-fi. It started off
as a novelty. “Oh wow, I can receive emails
at 30,000 feet!” Only a few planes had it,
and only on a few routes. But now they’ve
gone and rolled it out globally and you can’t
escape it. The last remaining enforced refuge
from the incessant digital bombardment has
gone. There is no going back. You might be
on a red-eye, wedged up into the armpit of
a warthog, but that’s no excuse not to reply to
your boss’s emails or to check in on Facebook.
The downside of never having to switch off
your phone is that you’re never able to switch
off your phone. We are the first generation
to become addicted to these devices so the
long-term effects are unknown. But in 30
years’ time I believe there’ll be a public health
outcry, similar to the one about cigarettes,
due to their ruinous psychological impacts.
I used to have a concentration span greater
than 10 minutes, now I feel like I have ADD.
I love and hate my smartphone, the little
wanker. “If you don’t stop stroking it, you’ll
go blind.” I hate that I can’t put it down, that
I feel anxious if it is out of arm’s reach or if
the battery suddenly plummets to sub-10 percent. My upper right thigh is so used to the
buzz of an incoming alert in my pocket I get
those phantom vibrations all the time.
Remember that oft-quoted statistic that
men think about sex every seven seconds?
That was before the iPhone when men used
to stare into middle distance/at a cleavage
and daydream. Now the average person
apparently checks their phone every six and a
half minutes. According to a study conducted
by Nokia (ah bless, remember them?), in the
16 hours most people are awake per day, they
check their phones 150 times. I’d say that was
a conservative estimate. These days, if I do
manage not to touch mine for more than a
few minutes, the damn attention-seeker will
trill or buzz with a passive-aggressive push
notification alerting me to Trump’s latest
dick move, a celebrity’s Tweet I “may have
missed” or a special offer from diapers.com.
It used to be that planes were one of the
few places where no one could reach you,all electronic devices
were shut down or
switched to flight mode,
giving travellers a few
hours’ respite.
But now they’ve
introduced fly-fi. And the
main problem is, compared
to the high-speed 4G
we’re used to on terra
firma, up in the air it’s
a bit shit – about as secure
as a job in the White
House. This, despite the
fact that, depending what
airline you’re flying with, you may have been
charged an Uber-style surge price during
times of peak demand.
Stand-up comedian Louis CK used to
do an amusing bit on in-flight wi-fi called
‘Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s
Happy’, about how we live in age of mind-
blowing technological advancement, yet all
we do is moan about it. But he first performed
that in 2008. Nine years on, I’m still waiting
for YouTube to load. The speed of technology
can never keep pace with human impatience.
First-world problems, you say? I could just
not turn it on and enjoy a few hours of digital
detox as before. But that’s like putting a box
of doughnuts in front of Homer Simpson and
saying he doesn’t have to try one. If it’s on
offer, I want it. I am a hard user. There is an
expectation to be available at all times. I feel
obligated to reply to every message. And six
hours without validation from strangers on
Instagram? Are you actually kidding me?
So for those of us who are addicted, some
internet is still just about better than no
internet. Which means despite the service
or lack thereof, we end up forking out for
sky-high wi-fi that just makes us swear
and tut: the equivalent of sucking at a tiny
kinked straw for hours when we are used
to gorging on broadband. And we can’t
complain to the provider because the
connection just dropped out again.COUNTING THE
COST OF SKY-
HIGH WI-FI.
COLUM
DAN ROOKWOODPHOTOGRAPHY: GIUSEPPE SANTAMARIA.80 GQ.COM.AU SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017