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. .
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.
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. |
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.