9 January

My posts on travel are explorations of the idea of 'being there'. There's an automatic assumption that going somewhere brings you closer to the 'real thing'. Proximity as authenticity. I argue the opposite. 'There' is not proximity. Take Jupiter. We send probes there, and they send back glorious images like this. Would you 'experience' the 'real' Jupiter by being there? Absolutely not. Firstly it's completely uninhabitable, you'd be crushed and boiled/frozen alive. But it's more than that. The diversity of things Jupiter is would completely escape any visitor to it. You can experience a lot more of Jupiter by not going, and looking at the images and other data. The same applies to travel destinations. Being 'there' takes you further away from the 'real' location. You can experience that location in a hugely more rich way by not going, and reading about it, looking at pictures and videos etc. There is no 'there' in the way travel culture assumes, no more authentic experience or access to a more real place, by being physically present. Even more, you being there changes what 'there' is. This is why locations are being transformed into theme parks, caricatures of their actual identity.