For many travelers, the goal of tourism now seems as much to be recording the trip as living the experience.
This impulse is neatly captured in a photograph by Lydie France of the European Pressphoto Agency that shows a crowd of people around the Mona Lisa, several of them holding up small cameras for snapshots. Why? Who needs a snapshot of the Mona Lisa? Why not just look and appreciate? The camera seems to form a barrier between the viewer and the experience.