Ever since the Wrights spoiled the party on the ground by taking to the skies the humans have kept wanting to improve the experience.
After over 100 years let me announce this...
We really have NOT! We flew Singapore Air - the staff at least does not yell back at you (certain stateside airlines will also give you free attitude and no peanuts) but its still hopeless.
One good thing going for the brothers Orville and Wilbur was that they tried to experiment on a beach in the Carolinas... clean fresh air and a short flight. Bathroom breaks at will etc.
Modern flights - this one going from San Fran to some point in Asia - 14 plus hours depending on the point. In something they call COACH. Not the fancy accouterment the ladies carry - although now that I think about it the trip sure felt like I was sitting in one. Cramped - barely able to sleep.
Some have counseled that the way to do these long haul pressurized, smelly, sort of compressed and almost tasteless food journeys is to adopt a Zen posture. Tune it all out and dream of what awaits on the other end. Sometimes that can work - again depending on what the other end might be or why you are trying to get there.
Regardless, add few infants (that are beginning to lose it) and invalids to the mix coupled with the pressures on the airline to keep feeding the dolts in all those seats lest they revolt, the passageways are barely free to wander and stretch any part of the anatomy.
If you do stretch, careful what you wish for since the bowels may want to take a break from this monotony and if luck would have it the lavatories would be out of commission - someone really went wild minutes before you and they had to shut a few down.
Now you have an aromatic pressurized cabin with wild infants and meal carts and semi comatose world citizenry, some waking up in an unfamiliar time zone and wondering why they got boiled chicken instead of the Korean grilled beef.
That's my beef!
This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...
at least you are not asking where's the beef, like some great people. The less said about long flights, the better.
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