I’m not going to write about Up in the Air. Enough has been written about how accurately it portrays the obsessions of the world’s frequent flyers: mileage runs, trying to eke out those last few miles to get more “status.” And enough, too, has been written about the inherent loneliness of business travel. (The book was written before social media were ubiquitous, back when business travel was even lonelier.)

At this writing I haven’t seen the movie yet — it’s on my holiday to-do list — but a part of me doesn’t want to watch it because of the loneliness that permeates the film. Yes, George Clooney’s character, a corporate terminator who travels the country firing people, is a metaphor for a lot of things, but his wanderlust and the pros and cons of that desire to travel constantly deserve some reflection on their own. There is a vast tribe of travelers out there who don’t quite ever feel at home unless they are “up in the air” — or at least in Airworld (a term that comes to us from, yes, Up in the Air by the great Walter Kirn). Look around you at the airport. Chat up the person next to you at the hotel bar. Take a gander at that guy doing an early morning workout at the hotel gym. They may not look like George Clooney, but they are the people he represents. If anything, the way we perceive his character may reveal our own collective bias toward seeing “domesticity” or “fixedness” as a positive thing.

Airworld isn’t inherently sad or happy — it just is, just as any place in the world is only a place before it takes on the characteristics of the people inhabiting it. I have written about the various communities that make up Airworld and about the charge I still feel when I’m in Airworld. To me, regardless of whether one sees it as a “sad” or “happy” place, Airworld is still enthralling, a place where the ideas of the world beg to be grabbed.

Airworld is where the world gets small. And “flat.” And where the world becomes something accessible and connected. It is, in many ways, a kind of medium — the power and immediacy of the internet and books and magazines and newspapers are writ in a 3D reality of real people talking about real ideas and traveling to real places. Tell me that’s not cool.