January 20, 2015

The Evolution Won't Be Televised

Think about how incomplete you felt the last time you left your home only to realize a while later that you left your phone at the house. Ever been out somewhere, went to grab your phone to check facebook, twitter or heaven forbid, make a call, and you nearly lost your shit because you hadn't a clue where the damn thing was?

It all started when it became commonplace for everyone to have cell phones. At first it was considered a luxury of course. As a kid I remember my dad had one of those vcr-sized phones installed in his company car, and I remember thinking I just wanted him to take us for a drive so we could call someone and look bad-ass doing it.

Later when everyone had a phone, I remember resisting the urge to have one on me constantly. I recall a bunch of us guys going out to some club or bar and I'd bust this one guy's nuts because he insisted on having his with him at all times. In my defense, my main reason for teasing the dude was a result of the douchebag aesthetic since it was one of those 3" wide phones that clipped onto your belt. Similarly, nowadays I would do the same with a dude I was out with if he wore one of those bluetooth headsets. He might be ready for that, but I am not. .

Bill Johnson on his cell phone, circa millions of years ago.
But things have changed a little since the early days. On my iphone right this second, I can watch live video of our planet from space. From fucking space.

Clearly, the advances and benefits are enormous. From emergencies to navigation to research to ordering a pizza without having to talk to some CSR, we've progressed enormously and this trend will continue, exponentially in fact.  Although Google has decided to stop selling their glasses, this is only a temporary blip - us soft mushy humans are still adverse to clunky wearables. Since many of us are already used to seeing people wearing watches, perhaps that's the direction we'll go. But I suspect the Next Big Thing will be when all this tech can be shrunk into a contact lense. Biotechnology is clearly the future and we've already seen it in the past and present, ranging from metallic hip replacements to artificial hearts to unbelievably advanced bionic limbs.

The average person might think we've completed our journey from star dust to single cell organisms to apes to humans, but they couldn't be more wrong. We continue to move forward and although the pace is picking up, it will still be hard to see it coming. The gap between machine and human is thinning. At first we'll still mostly be flesh and blood, but over hundreds and thousands of years, we'll eventually become something else.

As we should. 

5 comments:

  1. I Think Jesus would disagree with your comments. However, I look forward to the future of technology. Specifically the day when I can slip into my nano-suit and put in my nano-contact lenses and enter the virtual reality world. I'll be able to be whoever I want, wherever I want, whevener I want, and it will all be "real" to me. Then i can finally fulfill my dream of being Henry Winkler.

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  2. +1 for adherance to the teachings of the Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

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  3. @Clefto - Jesus was a robot and Henry Winkler was clearly one too.. But only as Fonzi, and he was more of a machine. Remember when he was the only one who could start the juke box by slamming it with his fist? That was the first local area network - just two machines communicating with each other..

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  4. Kaiserhead - the only thing religion has taught me is that, as evidenced bypriests, it makes you wanna sleep with little boys, so i'm staying the fuck clear.

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