Flight mode.

Hello Labbers. 

I'm sitting on a plane right now, waiting for it to take off. The engines are rumbling gently, somewhere in the innards of this metal beast, and I wait; with a little trepidation, for the damn thing to take off and hit the skies.
Now we're moving. 
It's a slightly unnerving feeling. I'm not going to lie.

Flight mode. The phone I'm typing this blog post on has a little feature whereby the phone's ability to send and receive radio/microwave signals is cut off.  This is apparently so it doesn't accidentally interfere with the plane's navigation systems. 

I know the nuts and bolts of the idea, and so am not going to dwell on it here.

What does interest me though, is the concept itself. Flight mode. 

The plane just left the ground. I hate that part.

Flight mode.  A period for around two hours (that's for this flight) when I am utterly alone in the world. Think about it. We are so connected to everyone else via our little electronic gizmos that it's akin to modern excommunication when we suddenly aren't.

It's as though in that couple of hours we suddenly don't exist. Of course we do, I realise that. The same collection of atoms and interacting systems that got up this morning is still here, furiously tapping away at this screen.
But the signal connecting me to the world is gone.  I've been flicked off the grid for a little while.

I'm flying through the sky, and the world doesn't know quite where I am. Only others aboard this plane do. It's a weird feeling.

Schröedinger's cat comes to mind. I think it's on this plane with me somewhere.

Ben from Ben's Lab,  signing off.