Alain de Botton Imagines a World Without Airplanes

The man who recently spent a week at Heathrow outlines what the world might look like without “the unremitting progress of inbound aluminium tubes.” De Botton even imagines what would happen to Heathrow:

At Heathrow, now turned into a museum, one would be able to walk unhurriedly across the two main runways and even give in to the temptation to sit cross-legged on their centrelines, a gesture with some of the same sublime thrill as touching a disconnected high-voltage electricity cable, running one’s fingers along the teeth of an anaesthetised shark or having a wash in a fallen dictator’s marble bathroom.

(via Gadling)

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