Clamouring for a fix

Instead of landing to the squeal of rubber on runways, aircraft are landing to a fanfare of electronic beeps and whistles.

In days gone by, the people rushing to get off an aircraft as soon as it touched the ground were the smoking fraternity.

Despite the collective wheeziness, it is always amazing how quickly smokers can run when they want to.

I am, of course, one of those people and have often been more worried after a long-haul flight about getting to the designated smoking area than about whether my luggage had arrived at the same destination.

But in the past few years, I have noticed that there are fewer and fewer people at the designated smoking area than in the past, especially in America, where some states probably allow you to be legally shot for lighting up.

Despite the decline in smokers, there are an increasing number of people who behave like smokers when a plane lands.

They even have the same expression as smokers having their first longed-for drag as they enter the terminal building.

But instead of lighting up they are booting up. Deprived of being connected to the Matrix, or internet as most people refer to it, for 10 hours, these always-on connected people are almost as addicted to IT as others are to nicotine.

Instead of landing to the squeal of rubber on runways, aircraft are landing to a fanfare of electronic beeps and whistles as phones are illegally turned on, ready for the fix, or are inadvertently left on in bags in the overhead bins.

Besides smoking areas, airports are introducing wireless hotspots to allow the growing ranks of the connected society to boot up and climb onto the information mainline before they are told to extinguish their laptops and board the plane.

And everywhere there are scores of LCD and plasma screens providing passenger information and advertising products.

Although the functionality at airports caters mainly for the world's early adopters and business travellers, there are increasing opportunities for resellers to build equivalent solutions, for example in schools, restaurants, retail outlets and other public places, as the need to be always connected consumes us all.