Last month, I finally retired my 2020 iPhone SE, which had been running out of storage and was struggling to handle basic tasks. My new phone is an iPhone 16 Pro, which has been quite the upgrade. (Thanks Sharlene for the birthday gift!)

Here are some phone photos from a recent flight I took from SF to NYC, mostly from the 5x telephoto camera. I had a lot of fun shooting these!

I love having my window shade at least somewhat open on flights, but I've noticed on my recent flights that people tend to keep the shades fully closed, so that the cabin is dark and they can more easily watch movies or sleep. I totally get this, but it's also hard not to see it as an example of our increasing disconnection from the real world.

Thinking about this reminded me of a passage from the 1909 sci-fi short story "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster. The story describes a world where people live isolated in underground rooms with all their needs tended to by an omnipotent Machine; in this part of the story, the main character Vashti ventures out of her room and travels on an airship:

When the air-ships had been built, the desire to look direct at things still lingered in the world. Hence the extraordinary number of skylights and windows, and the proportionate discomfort to those who were civilized and refined. Even in Vashti’s cabin one star peeped through a flaw in the blind, and after a few hours’ uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an unfamiliar glow, which was the dawn.

...

Dawn, midday, twilight, the zodiacal path, touched neither men’s lives not their hearts, and science retreated into the ground, to concentrate herself upon problems that she was certain of solving.

So when Vashti found her cabin invaded by a rosy finger of light, she was annoyed, and tried to adjust the blind. But the blind flew up altogether, and she saw through the skylight small pink clouds, swaying against a background of blue, and as the sun crept higher, its radiance entered direct, brimming down the wall, like a golden sea. It rose and fell with the air-ship’s motion, just as waves rise and fall, but it advanced steadily, as a tide advances. Unless she was careful, it would strike her face. A spasm of horror shook her and she rang for the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could do nothing; it was not her place to mend the blind. She could only suggest that the lady should change her cabin, which she accordingly prepared to do.

...

At midday she took a second glance at the earth. The air-ship was crossing another range of mountains, but she could see little, owing to clouds. Masses of black rock hovered below her, and merged indistinctly into grey. Their shapes were fantastic; one of them
resembled a prostrate man.

“No ideas here,” murmured Vashti, and hid the Caucasus behind a metal blind.

In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea, in which lay many small islands and one peninsula.

She repeated, “No ideas here,” and hid Greece behind a metal blind.