Is this the end of commuting?

The brother of a friend in Durban was once given a generous donation by a wealthy aunt. ‘I hate to see you just hanging around indoors all day. Buy an old Land Rover. Go and see the real Africa.’

The brother took the money but bought an enormous television instead. When my friend visited, he found him watching a wildlife documentary in glorious high-definition Technicolor. ‘Why would I want to go and see Africa when I can bring Africa in here?’ he explained.

I have a certain sympathy for this stoner approach to life. The ability to travel within your own mind seems to be a great gift — something to be cultivated. Instead we disparage it with terms such as ‘couch potato’. Yet it is really a mark of superior intelligence. Of all animals, the only two species which can watch television without extensive training are humans and dolphins. If you show a chimp a TV picture, they are completely bemused, and it requires some effort to get them to learn that images are depictions of reality. The vastly more intelligent dolphin grasps the concept immediately: ‘Ooh, that’s interesting — what’s he doing with that fish?’

Recently, under lockdown, I have been experimenting with virtual tourism. If you can watch YouTube on your television, you can find hundreds of walking tours of European cities filmed in high definition. In many respects, if you have a large enough 4K television, I cannot see how this experience is any less enjoyable or edifying than visiting these places in reality. As Dr Johnson said of the Giant’s Causeway: ‘It is worth seeing, but not worth going to see.’

Most of the world is like that.