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Wikipedia and streetview is in no shape or form comparable to experiencing something first hand.
Nor is the assumption that people do one or the other correct. Ideally you first do the online research to plan travel and then go.
having just returned from a trip to asia and australia, i can confidently say that the basic premise of this article is mistaken. reeling off facts from wikipedia is not the same at all as traveling to a country. the tastes, interactions, trash on the sidewalk, mysterious odors, miasamatic airs, overheard conversations all add up to a thousand times what the two paragraph history of vietnam gives you. is this satire?…
That's not the premise of the article, it's just an example. The premise is that knowledge depends on the source of information and it's quality, and travelling is usually a rather poor source on it's own.
> the tastes, interactions, trash on the sidewalk, mysterious odors, miasamatic airs, overheard conversations all add up to a thousand times what the two paragraph history of vietnam gives you.
So what history did you learn from the smells? What did you learn about the problems and philosophy of the people? This reads more like a delussion. Travelling a locations and talking to people is valuable, but this is mainly experience, not education. What you collect is the public picture of a place and their people, not the private parts they only talk about to people they really trust. Unless you live for some decades at a place, you will not be able to learn and understand the things you can gain from a well written article explaing something and it's history. Personal experience is a lousy educator, because its lacking on so many neccesary details.
There's more to education than just trivia and there's more to travel than just learning about the place you're in.
The only way to learn about the human condition is by meeting other humans.
Meeting someone from a vastly different culture and finding similarities is far more education than simply eading about how they are different.
Experiencing the flow of life _now_ and feeling the influence of history can only enrich the book knowledge of a place.
Sounds like this person could use some travel to teach them about empathy and patience for others. Their books don't seem to be sufficient.
BTW the value gained from travel is dropping with every new country. The single biggest lesson is just noticing everything you assumed is obvious and natural that is actually just accidental and specific to your country. Especially Americans would benefit from it.
> Not that it would have been logistically feasible back then, but I do sometimes ask myself if Pearl Harbor could have been prevented if enough Japanese statesmen had gone to vacation in New York.
Well we kind of know what the answer is. Toward the end of WW2 when the US was drawing up the list of cities to bomb, Kyoto got removed from the list at the insistence of the Secretary of War. He understood the cultural importance of the city, likely because he had travelled there. I’m surprised the author hadn’t read about it on Wikipedia.
But back to my point. Sitting and staring into my magic 13-inch rectangle starts to make me feel like…nothing. A formless gel of facts and trivia. Travel makes me feel like a human being again. Travel may not be education but I do think that, when done well, it is wisdom.
Having travelled the world I can say without a doubt that this person misses the point of travel. It isn’t about winning a trivia night. It’s about connecting deeply on a level that a Wikipedia article just cannot offer.
One of my favorite things about a recent trip to Japan was just watching people go about their daily lives. We stayed in a home and it was fascinating how differently the homes are designed and function. There is no substitute for experiencing a place.