Imagine, you plan your vacation minutes before your departure, no rush for passport, no suffering through crowded airport and cruise ships, no discomfort in transit, no lost luggage, no food infections, no savage attacks, no translation problems and no exorbitant and poor healthcare costs.
The technology is there; whether it’s Google Maps or the like, you just need to add bandwidth to make everything smoother and, hey presto, it works. From your TV chair with a remote control or a virtual headset, from your stationary bike, you could go around the world. […] You can visit all the countries where a visual survey has been made. If you wish, you can also take a tour of the recent past, preserved in archives.
Of course, it lacks the tasting of local dishes, the face-to-face contact, the weather of the moment and the physical experience of climbing a mountain, but for those who care, there will still be travel, but at prices closer to their ecological cost.
The important thing is progress for planetary ecosystems. Less motorized travel, less resources stolen from local populations in poor regions, less land and sea pollution, less construction of reception infrastructures and less cross-border transfers of diseases unknown to us as well as unwanted insects and invasive plants. In short, considering the enormous bandwidth costs, which company will be the first to invest in a virtual travel offer?