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Allan Flores
Dr. Werner
College Comp 102
13 March 2016
Technology in a Travelers World
Technology has done many things different things over the past years and as changed the
course world. It has made things easier and more advanced for humans to survive and live in the
world. Technology is now one of the most important things that humans dependent on now a
days and its also become the center of attention as it continues to evolve over the years. What
first started out as simple designs to create a flying machine by Leonardo da Vinci to it actually
being built by the Wright Brothers. Technology continues to evolve as the years go on because of
the human minds' curiosity and the hungry to grow into a more advanced society.
In the book Travel Connections by Molz, she begins it by saying how she was a
backpacker on a journey to explore the world around her. Meeting new people and doing new
things technology wasnt a big thing at the time and if you had something like a laptop it was
difficult to comprehend why a person would have such a thing. There wasnt anything to do on a
laptop since the Internet basically didnt exist back then. Although with technology being that
way, it made her curious and motivated her to do scholarly research on technology and the uses
of it around the world.
Most people have their hole lives based around technology, some dont even use it once a
month, some reasoning behind it is that technology wasnt a popular thing if you were to go
back a decade or so, things like portable computers, Internet cafes, wireless Internet, mobile
smart phones, connected hotspots, online social networking sites, user-friendly social media

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platforms and photo sharing sites has normalized ubiquitous access to the Internet among mobile
and geographically dispersed social groups, not least of all interactive travelers.(Molz 3) What
she was depicting in that quote was that things like that werent a part of normal society
especially if you were a traveler. Technology advanced little by little without most of the world
even knowing it was happening. There are so many things now that people can turn to show off
what they are doing on social media that its become somewhat of a norm of the newer generation
rather than the past ones.
The one main things that Molz points out in this book is that when it comes to traveling,
you may be across the world from your friends but always still connected together because of
technology. The use of technology has enabled people to communicated from all around the
world, making the world more advanced when it comes to traveling and communicating. The
mobility that travelers nowadays are far beyond what people had just 10 years ago, it doesnt
seem like a long time ago but in actuality it is. We are barely limited to where we can use
technology, nowadays its accessible almost everywhere, Their mobility is conditioned by the
access to material and social resources that interactive travelers have in ample supply: portable
devices, passports, credit cards, and a similarly privileged social network of linked-up friends
and family members with whom they communicate" (Molz 23).
Does the thought of who else has done this same exact thing, pop into your mind when
someone pulls out his or her phone to take a picture or take a video of something when traveling?
Molz brings questions like this about when she discusses one of the key paradigms in tourism
studies, and that is "landscape. People dont often understand the concept of landscape has
been used to make sense of the way travelers envision and embody the places they visit, offering
a complex framework for thinking about the overlapping material and symbolic qualities of

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tourists connections to the place" (Molz 39). The whole concept of landscape can be described
as the use to make sense of the way travelers vision and make use of the places that they visit,
offering a different way of thinking of the places, and the landscape that they visit. Almost like
the idea that tourism isnt about how popular the place is more about what you make of it.
Traveling in the words of Molz is about experiencing things that one has never done,
never thought of doing and making the best out of it because with the help of modern technology
that is something that can come so easily. In a part of her book Molz quotes someone called
"Cosgrove," explain the whole idea of what she is explaining. Saying that The landscape idea,
as a way of seeing and inhabiting the material environment, was thus born out of a particular
arrangement of mobilitys and technologies, cultural production and material practice and human
interactions with a place". (Molz 41) Showing and explaining the theory of making the best of
where you are using the tools (technology) around.
In Neal Stephensons article, Innovation Starvation he talks about technology and the
need to keep moving on with our evolution of technology and how necessary it is for us to keep
moving forward. Talking about how people nowadays have been situated with the fact that we
are more than enough qualified to handle ourselves but the truth is we arent. In the opinion of
my own and of Stephensons based off of what he has written, us as a civilization are not
technologically advance because we as a whole keeps evolving as the time goes on. Jenne Molz
also has expressed this in her book, talking about how technology influenced a lot of the world
and the people who use it.
Throughout the whole book, Molz describes her experiences traveling and how
technology has influenced it over the years. Telling stories of her experiences with it while he
traveled, giving examples and stories to expand upon it. Overall, this book was very entailing

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and brought up some very good points on technology. Furthermore, on how it deals with
traveling, tourism and the togetherness in a mobile world.
Word Count: 1017

Work Cited

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Molz, Jennie. Travel Connections. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print
Stephenson, Neal. Innovation Starvation. Technology. Ed. Johannah Rodgers. Oxford:
Oxford UP. Yr. Pages. Web