When I was a kid if someone had said “The year 2016,” I’d have imagined a far off future world. Anything past 2000 was the land of science fiction ... casual space flight, robots, incredible technology, enlightened philosophies, silver lamé tunics and flying cars. We’ve been past 2000 for some time now and while there have been fantastic leaps in technology I wonder if we have arrived in the world of the future. Is it still a distant fantasy?
I’m happy with my place in the history of the world, there’s really been no better age to witness. I was born the year of the moon landing. Older people have seen an even greater advancement than I have, but I enjoy having seen the change from the analog world to the digital, from the space age to the information age.
From vinyl records to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to MP3s to streaming; from rabbit ears, a few channels and turning the dial to several hundred channels and remote controls; from yearly broadcasts of movies to VHS tapes to DVDs to Blu-Rays to Netflix; from Pong to Atari to Nintendo to Xbox; from stop motion special effects and old fashioned stunts to flawless CGI; from dusty encyclopedias to Wikipedia; from film to Polaroids to megapixels; from handwritten letters to text messages and Skype; from rotary dial phones with coiled cords to a phone that fits in my pocket and connects me to the Internet and all it offers, they’re all an amazing series of technological innovations.
But, many of those advancements center around entertainment. There have also been incredible advancements in medicine, and the future continues to look promising, but I can think of no major disease which has been cured. Some things have been brought under control for the most part, with surgery, vaccines or medicines, but the world is still afflicted with countless horrible diseases and conditions. There is no magic pill yet.
Transportation has made many advancements, but not as many as I would have expected. It really isn’t much different than it was when I was a kid. Yes, cars are faster, safer and have more bells and whistles, but they haven’t advanced all that much. We’re supposed to be commuting in bubble-topped flying cars that make futuristic sounds as they zip past us.
We’ve yet to evolve past a desire for war and conflict. True, war has often been the catalyst for advancements in medicine and technology, but we’ve mostly only advanced in making our weapons more controllable from a distance or more lethal and destructive. War, death and destruction is still war, death and destruction; in the big picture it hasn’t helped society during my lifetime. For now, world peace will continue to live in a future world.
And what about the Internet coupled with the smart phone? I hesitate to call it an invention because it’s a combination and culmination of a series of developments, advancements and inventions. The legendary inventor Nikola Tesla perfectly and incredibly predicted our current age back in 1926.
“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles, and the instruments through which we shall be able to do all of this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. We shall be able to witness and hear events ... just as though we were present,” said Tesla.
This easy and common access to the Internet means we essentially have, in our pockets, all of man’s history and acquired knowledge. To have that much information at our fingertips and to be able to locate it within mere seconds is, in my opinion, the greatest technological innovation of my lifetime. Yes, mankind traveled to the moon, but the phone sitting next to me has exponentially more power than the huge computers used by NASA and my phone carrier provided it to me free in exchange for a reasonable monthly service fee.
I think we’ve seen some indication of what kind of benefits easy access to vast amounts of information will provide our world, but it’s only begun. We’re already seeing teenagers and other unlikely people make discoveries with the common technology and knowledge available, but imagine what we’ll be seeing in another generation or two. Fantastic inventions and progress will no longer only exist in the realm of scientists in secluded laboratories, rather, they’ll be evolving in basements, living rooms, libraries, garages and school rooms. And, as far as we’ve come in my lifetime, the developments brought forth by the first and truly digital generations should be revolutionary. I’ll still be waiting for my flying car.
BCR Staff Writer Dave Cook can be reached at dcook@bcrnews.com.