CS-304 Blog Post #1: Icebreaker

Hello everyone. My name is Dylan Gowanlock, and I'm a fourth-year communications student. I hope you have all had seamless transitions back into the school year and into the classroom particularly. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday and Wednesday mornings this term. While I myself use all of the social media platforms we are all well acquainted with by now, I try to have one online hobby I use to keep myself grounded. Lately, this hobby has been using the website flightaware.com (https://flightaware.com/live/map). On this site, the user is able to look at a live interactive map of ongoing flights and track their progress. When I am just about to go to bed, I like to try to find the information using the website's interactive design of at least one flight that will fly over my head and figure out where it departed from and where its final destination will be.

While I don't do this often, I find that when I'm able to actually see a passenger airliner moving overhead, knowing exactly where it has come from and is going, the effect is oddly therapeutic. It puts things into perspective for myself personally. I like to think of the differences in culture between the cities that the plane will see. I can relate this to our discussion of the Canadian Pacific Railway today and how these vast transportation networks allow and create a coherent society that allows for the rapid transmission of knowledge, communication, technology, commerce, and culture.

Today I was able to see an Air Canada flight that's journey started at YUL (Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport) and will be landing at LAX (I'm sure we all know where this is).

One last thing I'll add. While of course there is no way to have 100% certainty that I'm seeing the right plane at all, I try to match the time I see anything fly over head with the interactive map while going on a late night walk. It's the thought that counts for me.




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