Bergen, Norway
Waiting to board my flight back to Seattle the other day, I began to think about technology. When I was growing up, I had a record player. In high school, it was replaced with a Walkman, followed by a CD player. Today, I own an iPod.
I look at my bookcase with more than 400 CDs on it, and marvel at the thought that every one of those CDs is squished into my MP3 player. A few years ago when I traveled, I would have to choose maybe five cassette tapes to keep me entertained for a two-month stint, working in Europe. Today, I can take my entire music collection. It's delightful.
As I waited to board my plane, I stopped to wonder: How is it that over the past couple of decades, music storage has become so compact, yet nobody has managed to invent a smaller plane ticket? Boarding passes are huge. They are approximately three times the surface area of an iPod, yet they contain far less information. Is this necessary?
After I check in for a flight, I always find myself standing at the desk, staring at my boarding pass, wondering where I can put it. My front pocket always seems like the least damaging safe place, but by the time my flight boards, my boarding pass has become too mangled to go through the scanner. It gets exceptionally bad when I have a connecting flight several hours later.
I imagine that one day, far into the future, someone will invent a smaller boarding pass. It will be mangle-resistant, wallet-sized, perhaps crafted from high-tech plastic. Those will be exciting times. Until then, each time I board a flight, I must endure the scornful glare of flight attendants, who want to know why my big boarding pass has turned into three little pieces of boarding passes.
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