Is it fair to think of an airplane as a giant gadget? Had this thought yesterday as I traveled back on a short (how about overnight) trip to Atlanta to meet with some of the engineers at Turner Entertainment and CNN and see and hear about the future of broadcast, content creation and content delivery firsthand.

Seems we had a little trouble on the Delta flight down – one of the landing gear doors won’t shut – wheels stayed down – so we had to land at JFK after taking off from LaGuardia (some of you know how silly it sounds to take off from one NYC airport and land at another).

Anyway, once on the ground, the maintenance crew swapped out a board (doesn’t that sound like computer hardware to you?) and then the pilot had to wait for his navigation system to be reset (doesn’t that sound like software to you?). Funny when the pilot said he was waiting for his Atari screen to be reset so he could get back into the air (doesn’t that sound like video gaming to you?).

So, is an airplane a giant gadget?