The first thing I do when I check into a hotel room on a business trip is head directly to the desk to make sure the Internet connection works. If the Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection does not snap to life, I am ready to march down to the lobby and threaten to check out if the hotel can't fix it.
The nonnegotiable demand for connectivity says less about our impatience and sense of entitlement as business travelers (or so I'd like to think) than it does about our basic needs. We're accustomed to being connected, we need to be connected and we get upset when we're not.
On a video clip that has been widely shared online, the comedian Louis C. K. tells of being on an airplane with Wi-Fi when the man seated beside him suddenly loses his connection and explodes in curses about airline incompetence. 'How quickly does the world owe him something that he knew existed only 10 seconds ago?' he asks.
Well, that's the thing, actually. We are wired. Business travel, and even the augmentations to business travel like videoconferencing, are all firmly on the grid. The rapidly developing industry of installing Wi-Fi connections on airplanes is a testament to our dependence on connectivity - and the joke underscores the insistence that it be reliable.
But are we on thin ice, technologically? The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, a worldwide trade group representing company travel managers, says it believes we are. To an extent not fully appreciated by policy makers, the organization says, business travel is dependent on fragile technological networks that have already shown the stresses of a sudden strain.
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Source - New York Times
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