For a while now the travel website TripAdvisor has offered travellers and commuters like me, advice  on selecting the best seat on a commercial passenger aeroplane. It’s not unlike choosing the best spot in a bus shelter, out of the wind and rain, away from the spray thrown up from the road by passing traffic… all very legitimate stuff… actually the kind of stuff that in a very ordinary way can be used to teach us to engage with each other, to accommodate each other, in short; to be obliging.

It’s these very situations, when we have to accommodate the needs and wants of others that, at a superficial level, help us build social skills and navigate relations with others; and at a deeper level, teach us patience, tolerance and understanding of the needs and wants of others.  Whether it’s sharing shelter under a stranger’s umbrella, negotiating time in the bathroom between siblings, parents and children, or squidging-up on public transport to give someone else some room.  In a daily maze of cramped homes, private and public transport, modest family budgets and limited technologies.

In the past, we may have used each others soap, towels and toothbrushes, clothes, toys and technology. We listened to the same music, because that’s what was on the radio, watched one programme, crammed around one TV because that’s all there was in the home.  In such a social environment, we learned to accommodate, we learned to share, we learned to tolerate.  It  even opened us up to new experiences, new influences and to encountering and accommodating the new and the different. It encouraged us to spend time with, or doing, something that wasn’t part of our immediate set of preferences. And now…

Dutch Airline Lets Passengers Pick Seats By Perusing Facebook Profiles; reads a news headline of this weeks PCmag.  It goes on to say:

 There are a few dreaded co-passengers you always fear you’ll be forced to sit by on a flight: the lady with the screaming baby, the linebacker who horns in on your elbow room, or a talker who won’t shut up long enough for you to put on your headphones.

Now KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is introducing a social way for you to pick your own seat. According to USA Today, the carrier will let you choose where you sit by looking at the social media profiles of other fliers.

When you check in online, you can choose where you rest your behind for a couple of hours by browsing Facebook and LinkedIn profiles of passengers who have opted to link their pages to their e-tickets, selecting a seatmate with similar interests.

USA Today said the service is available to anyone who wants to participate, but you’re not obligated to connect your profile.

Of course the moment you introduce a facility like this we ALL participate. Whilst we may not choose to use the Facebook profile, it’s now a determining procedure that impacts on the social quality of our journeys.  Do we really believe there will never be a journey where our circumstances, our choices, our actions don’t incovenience others.  If you like a window seat, maybe you should use your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles to mention the frequency with which you visit the toilet.

Is it a disturbing trend? As western workers become more affluent, we have more space in our homes, and more technology at our disposal.  We don’t have to share a room any longer, we may even have our own en-suite bathroom, and more rooms for eating, relaxing, exercising.  We have multiple personal music, tv and video devices; we can secrete ourselves away and enjoy a solitary not a shared experience.  We can watch what we want, when we want at home, isolate ourselves with our iPods as we commute to work, no need to say hello, chat to or even acknowledge fellow travellers on the train. No need to seek the company of neighbours, when we can text and Skype to our hearts content with people the same as us.  No need in fact to find yourself obliged to or obliging of, any one.  A 21inch firewall around our bodies, with very careful rules about who or what is allowed to penetrate.

Now to get slightly mashable; since around 2008 Klout.com has been developing the metrics to measure our online influence. How does our output Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and other social media platforms influence the behavious and activities of others? Regretably no-one is actually measuring the fall in our influence on family, neighbourhood, workmates and colleagues as we work we continue to manufacture our personal firewall, as we construct our personal solitude and accept the rules defined by social media to determine what, when and with whom we share… if you can really call that “sharing” at all.

So I wonder, in these conditions, how do we learn to become accommodating and tolerant?  How does our breadth of comprehension and understanding grow.  How do we avoid a failure to oblige?