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Thinking about your holidays: Technology takes the pain away
Soon you will be able to smell the dodgy sewage system before you get there...

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Wednesday 29 August 2001

While fighting over current day-to-day use of IT is our bread and butter here at silicon.com, there's nothing quite like staring into a crystal ball and considering future developments.

When considering the nine day wonder (or was there more to it?) otherwise known as Ginger at the start of the year we received almost unprecedented levels of reader response, and now it seems your average e-tailer has recognised the interest - and, in all honesty, the sheer publicity value - in talking up future technologies. We couldn't resist a second look.

Flight and holiday website ebookers.com has come up with five possibilities for the future that will greatly change the travel industry, ranging from the humdrum (3G phone networks - which we will stick our necks out and say will happen), to the ludicrous (scentography - synthetic smells to bring about that holiday frame of mind, though we're not sure why "the smell of a burning man or mildew" were cited).

In between these are some exciting possibilities. The use of virtual reality headsets, while touted in various areas for many years, should undoubtedly one day help all manner of businesses. Or just be a lot of fun.

The use of a tactile 'data glove' would also be some kind of breakthrough, and an advance from touchscreen technology.

However, we were somewhat bemused by ebookers' description of 'vertical flying'. The idea being to produce an air/space craft able to fly straight up into space and then wait for the destination to come around before descending - thus using the earth's own rotation to speed up long-haul flights to destinations such as the antipodes.

Not a bad idea, but we reckon a flight to Australia would also need some kind of south-bound effort unless there is a technology out there for changing the earth's axis. If not, I'm afraid LHR departures would be limited to cities such as Vancouver, Ulan Bator and Brussels.

Happy holidays.