Missouri parks make sure you don’t have to give up your Netflix while camping
Near the end of the film, The Big Picture, aspiring filmmaker Kevin Bacon gets in his convertible and drives into the desert. He returns to discover that Hollywood has fallen in love with his work in his absence. Malcolm Gladwell laments, in a recent public e-mail chat with Bill Simmons on ESPN’s Grantland, that the days of being “out of touch” are gone (23 years have passed since The Big Picture was in theaters) – the idea that by simply being out of the office, one could be unreachable.
But we are the architects of our own connectivity. Responding to a 2010 survey, in which campground visitors said Internet connectivity would convince them to stay longer and more often, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has begun rolling out free wireless Internet in its parks. Missouri State Parks now offers free wireless service in 11 parks (the list is here in a piece by the St. Louis Business Journal) and expects to have wireless service in 37 of its 40 parks by the end of the year. It turns out that Verizon knew what we wanted before we did.
