The final months of 2014 have seen many critical events in respect to mobility:
Apple introduced its Apple Watch, a cyborg technology that adds a novel,
substantially corporeal layer to our “always on” connectedness—what Sherry
Turkle has termed the “tethered self.”1 Moreover, it is said to revolutionize
mobile paying systems, and it might finally implement mobile body monitoring
techniques into daily life.2 Ebola is terrorizing Africa and frightening the
world; its outbreak and spread is based on human mobility, and researchers
are calling for better control and quantifi cation of human mobility in the affected
regions to contain the disease.3 Even its initial spread from animals to
humans may have had its origin in human transgressions beyond traditional
habitats, by intruding into insular bush regions and using the local fruit bats
as food. Due to global mobility patterns, the viral passenger switched transport
modes, from animal to airplane. On the other hand, private space fl ight
suff ered two serious setbacks in just one week when the Antares rocket of Orbital
Sciences, with supplies for the International Space Station and satellites
on board, exploded, and shortly after, SpaceShipTwo crashed over the Mojave
Desert. Th ese catastrophic failures ignited wide media discussion on the challenges,
dangers, and signifi cance of space mobility, its ongoing commercialization
and privatization, and, in particular, plans for future manned space
travel for “tourists.”4
Manned space travel: from a race between nations to a race against the environmental stressors beyond earth
