The Disconnected Interconnected

Musings from an airport terminal

Shanghai - different city, same choreography.

I was sitting outside Starbucks with time to kill and a large cup of strong black tea; two sugars to take the edge off. Istanbul airport hums: hurried footsteps; the polite urgency of the tannoy; quiet, disembodied voices; and the soft, increasingly irritating robotic refrain of the travelator: “Caution: you are reaching the end of the travelator. Caution: you are reaching the end of the travelator. Caution…”

A perfect spot to indulge in some people-watching, I did a quick count as I brought out my notebook and scanned my surroundings - eleven people on digital devices, two reading books. There was barely a voice above a murmur. In an airport that connected countries, cities, and families, the people inside it were mostly elsewhere. The disconnected interconnected.

When I was a teenager, connection was tangible. Plans were made in person or by landline, and kept. Phone calls were a nightly staple; conversations timed by fathers with an eye on the cost. You wrote letters and waited in anticipation for a response. Now contact is constant, bright, immediate, silent. We’re always reachable but barely reached beyond a glance and a flick.

Airports are a showcase for the current norm. They’re spaces full of suspended lives: strangers shoulder-to-shoulder, scrolling private worlds. Presence outsourced to other places, other time zones. I didn’t judge it - I do it too- but I was struck by the quiet. Eleven screens glowed like small hearths; two readers held onto a different kind of fire.

Fragments from the gate

Earbuds in, eyes locked on a screen, a man walked the concourse like a ghost navigating another city entirely. His body was there; his attention, outsourced.

The travelator repeated ad nauseam in its tinny robot voice: “Caution: you are reaching the end of the travelator.” A sentence that was both warning and metaphor.

A slow ribbon of travellers drifted past, scanning signs, faces, the ever-changing departures board, wondering where they should be going.

Sugar, stir, breathe. A two-handed pause in a two-thumb world. I wrapped my fingers around the paper cup and felt the heat. For a moment, I was only there.

It’s wearing, that nowhere-time. The constant background noise, the low-grade vigilance of not missing your flight. There’s the travel-wobble too: that sense of perpetual motion even when seated. Like walking at normal pace on the travelator and moving faster than feels right - body and brain slightly out of sync.

What we’ve lost, what we’ve gained

Loss? Maybe some of it is.

Letters taught thought, patience, the joy of re-reading. Pay phones required courage and concision: you had to say what mattered before the coins ran out. Friendship was grounded; you knew where people were, not just whether they’d seen your message.

But I was also conscious of what we’ve gained. I can send a photograph to someone oceans away and share the moment in the moment. I can say I’ve arrived, I’m safe, I’m thinking of you. The same tools that mute conversation can increase care, if we let them.

Maybe the announcement was telling us something else too: mind the edge, look up before the belt ends. Perhaps the question isn’t screens or no screens, but texture. How do we stitch a little texture back into connection?

Tiny acts of humanity: a voice note instead of a like; a postcard from a destination; the discipline of looking up. Maybe on days like that I should make one human gesture per gate. Ask a stranger if I have the right queue. Help a struggling mother. Make eye contact and smile.

I was writing about disconnection while paying attention - noticing the squeaky wheel on a boy’s carry-on, the way the cloak of solitude rearranges itself when someone stands, the worried expression of the woman scanning the departures board. I was the exception; the person looking up and observing in a sea of people looking down. Which made me wonder: is presence a choice we’re making less often, or just a muscle we’ve forgotten to use?

The old vocabulary of letters ran through my head: Dear... I’m writing from... I can’t wait to tell you... It wasn’t nostalgia exactly. It was a reminder that connection once required composition, not just reflex.

Boarding

The gate came alive. People stood and tentatively formed a queue that was both orderly and not. For a brief moment, there was movement and eye contact, and the comedy of passport panic. Someone let someone else go first. A child grasped a stranger’s sleeve and was redirected gently. Phones were proffered for boarding.

I tucked my notebook away and finished my tea. Eleven screens, two books. And all of us, for a few minutes more, in the same space.