"Four weeks ago I visited Manchester on a short break. I took a change of pants and socks, a spare T-shirt and my mobile phone. When I arrived in the city, I told Twitter that I was hungry, and within minutes I was gorging on corned-beef hash thanks to a recommendation from a fellow Tweeter. I held my phone up to Piccadilly Gardens, turned on an app, and its Wikipedia entry flashed across my screen, overlaid on to the grass in front of me through the camera in my phone. I opened another app, and dozens of local suggestions were hovering around me. There was a bar 288m from where I was standing where I'd get a free drink if I mentioned a secret word to a barman called Angus." (from 'Are guidebooks facing extinction?' by Benji Lanyado, for the Observer)
I readily admit to using the internet, a lot, when trip planning: I read travel forums, check out online versions of travel magazines, and peruse countless blogs. My Google travel document is so loaded up with recommendations that there's no way I'll ever get to them all. I'll also admit that there are benefits to traveling with a smartphone, like on-the-spot dining and entertainment recommendations based on your physical location in a city. Today's gadgets offer a more streamlined, personalized travel experience than ever before, but honestly, I'm not sure what I think of it all. Where's the opportunity for personal interaction, like actually asking a living, breathing person for a dining recommendation? Where's the chance to lose your way, and gain a serendipitous experience? Our gadgets enable us to dwell in isolated little spaces, effectively communicating to the world that we're preoccupied, off-limits, that we shouldn't be bothered. This can be awfully nice if you're feeling anti-social (like I usually am), but is it a good thing?
When the mere thought of how much information is accessible starts to overwhelm, I think back fondly to a trip I took that involved very little planning, a lot of ignorance, and endless opportunities for discovery. I took that trip a little over ten years ago, in a different world, really, than the one Lanyado writes about. These days I actually tend to plan too much, to research too much, to have too many options. I like making plans. But there's something wonderful, too, about leaving a bit to chance, and leaving some room for mystery.
