Future Ubiquities

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April 24, 2006 by Jim Parker in future

As a little girl, my grandmother rode a horse drawn wagon to the church on Sunday’s in the early 1920’s. Today, at 94, she has a machine that keeps her heart beating reliably and is about to fly via jetliner across the country in a matter of hours to visit children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

That’s a lot of change to see in ones lifetime.

And I will see more change than she did.

Already I’ve seen some stuff. When I was much younger (early ‘80s), my father brought a terminal home from the university. It was a device that had a keyboard, a dot-matrix printer, and a place to set your phone receiver.

My brother and I didn’t much understand what such a thing could be for – but boy was it cool. My dad dialed a special phone number at the university, put the receiver snuggly in the “ear cups”, and then typed something.

And then we waited for what seemed like forever.

Finally, the machine came to life, noisily spitting out words on the typing paper. The machine had responded.

Now, you have to understand what a huge deal this was for us back then. Here we were at home in the comfort of my dad’s office in the basement communicating with a machine 20 miles away. Absolutely amazing and magical.

Today I can do much more. I can read blogs on my phone while getting my car’s oil changed. As I sit in my car in a garage hearing things like “I got oil pressure on bay 2”, I am connected, real-time, to what people all over the world are saying about the topic of my choice.

Of course, my grandmother could do the same thing, right. But she won’t. She’s seen enough new fangled gizmo’s and technology in her life time. And that’s just fine.

But what about my future kids? (“future” because my wife and I have got twins on the way – due in July)

What’s life going to be like for them when they are 10 years old? What are they going to be writing about when they’re as old as me?

Are they going to be laughing about how completely silly it was when they were 10 when daddy brought home an 8×10 piece-of-paper-looking video screen that had full motion, full resolution video on it - that looked like something that would very nicely fly across the room? I am sure they will reflect on the novelty of being able to roll it and fold it and throw it (like a Frisbee) - this cutting edge display device…

…Much like I tossed around vinyl records at Christmas time one year as a kid…

…Or how we use CD’s today as coasters…

…Or how we disassemble old hard drives so we can get the wonderfully powerful and fun magnets out…

What’s next?