I suppose you could say the real world has "fast travel", but it's more akin to the Silt Striders in Morrowind rather than the "fast travel" in Oblivion, FO3, and FO:NV. It's not just simple teleporting, and IMO, it adds to the experience and the depth of the world.
I mean, how do the regular people get around? Surely, not everyone has the ability to teleport across the entire world in 2 seconds? Surely not everyone can afford a horse? And surely not everyone has the physical stamina and strength required to go hiking across a vast mountain range akin to the American Rockies (I would know, I live in Utah, there's a reason they demoed Skyrim in Park City).
The plain and simple fact is that it's a massive immersion breaker. I really just wish they would take the above things into account, develop a sort of "fast travel" that the everyday citizens in Skyrim employ to travel, and then allow the player to utilize it as well.
Just give those of us who want a more immersive gameplay experience an alternative. If they did that, then I would be able to ignore fast travel.
I was referring to type of fast travel I described in my previous post, which recommended using WoW's various methods of fast travel as a means of traversing distances quickly without actually skipping the entire environment (which was the case with Silt Striders in Morrowind or the default fast travel in Oblivion.)