Posted on: Monday, October 1, 2001

On the Road
America's future on the ground

Advertiser Staff and Wire Services

You'll seal business deals with the push of a button and the wink of a pixel instead of a personal handshake and slap on the back.

You'll live near the best Internet access, instead of conveniently near a big airport.

Your ex will go to court to keep you from taking a terrific job far enough away that the kids would have to fly to visit.

That's a snapshot of a ground-bound America, brought to earth by a combination of post-terrorist aviophobia and the deterioration of the airline industry. Even those not afraid to fly can't find the flights and times they need, and worry that they'll get stranded somewhere if they can.

People who rely on get-togethers are scrambling for alternatives because of national trauma from the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks. The seekers have begun to outline the future as if it were shorn of frequent air trips, characterized by accelerating use of electronic communications, marbled with tougher restrictions on business-travel expenses.

A semi-grounded future will:

• Replace travel with technologies. "Reluctance to travel could be the tipping point where people say, 'Let's try that video conferencing,' " says Elliott Masie, president of the Masie Center, a technology think tank in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

• Spread us out. "I expect a hell of a lot more telecommuting," says futurist Jerry Glenn, as improvements in, and familiarity with, long-distance interaction technology make it unnecessary for people to show up at the office. "If you're a knowledge worker — accountant, attorney, engineer — and you decide you'd rather live in rural Colorado or Wyoming or Arizona or the Charlottesville, Va., countryside, it's easier for you to do that" because of electronic communications possibilities, says James Levitt, director of the Internet and Conservation Project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

• Be a royal pain sometimes. Sam Malik has met that part of the future, and it's a beast. He's national sales and marketing director for Toshiba America Consumer Products and must get from Chicago to New York to Cincinnati and back to Chicago for in-person business meetings.

Toshiba has restricted flying in the USA, so Malik's spending 20 hours on a train, instead of two hours on a plane, to reach New York. He'll rent a car, drive to the New Jersey meeting, ride the rails another 19 hours to Cincinnati, and finally drive six hours back to Chicago.

"All that to do six days of business," he says. "It would have been a hop, skip and a jump" flying.

• Restrict movement and job choices. "I just finished a meeting with a client torn between staying here unemployed or going to New York, where he has a job waiting," but which would eliminate frequent visits with his kids because his ex-wife is afraid to let them fly, says Sharyn Sooho, divorce lawyer in Newton, Mass. "Is she right or wrong to have a fear of flying? We're going to court to find out."

• Force decisions about how much human touch is essential. "We go to Europe all the time for fashion shows, to be sure our fashion is forward and that we have the best prices," says an executive for The Limited. "A lot of it is about going and seeing people, walking around Paris, going to stores, seeing trends. You can't do that" on the Internet.