Today while running I was listening to a Chinese Science Fiction ( The Dark Forest ), translated to English, and recorded as an Audio book in a Studio in some corner of the world, that I downloaded from Audible over airwaves using Cellular 4G – from a server in US or Singapore – to my iPhone.
And as I listened through my head phones, almost at the exact quality it was recorded, the phone was tracking my run with the help of Geo Synchronous Satellites far up in the sky orbiting earth – I was wondering – man how lucky I am.
This is like living in a Future I couldn’t have imagined 30 years back.
Humans have progressed from Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Medieval, Industrial to the current Information Age.
I can’t place if we are in the middle or just at the threshold of Information Era.
We were slowly cruising in the Information Age – from Mainframes to Laptops to mobile phones and having incremental improvements in every field.
Out of the blue, Steve Jobs, went ahead and revealed iPhone – 10 years back – and was a turning point in the Human History.
[ Stay low Jobs haters – Google’s Android did not look anything close to what iOS was. The day iPhone was released, head of Google’s Android project called his team on a Nokia phone ( or might have been Blackberry ) and told – scrap everything we are doing – we have to start over. And Nokia, Blackberry were just cruising filling up their coffers with incremental upgrades ]
Having portable computing power, with ability to communicate real time with anyone in the world – not just audio but pictures and video – has shrunk this world like never before.
Then Twitter got a new lease of life after it got into a Smartphone. Any event happening anywhere in the world is now just a tweet away. A Tsunami, a plane crash, Federer saving a Match Point, Messi missing the penalty – need not wait for the next day’s newspaper – it is right there for anyone in the world to read without a single second delay – they just need a Smart Phone with an internet connection. Meerkat and Periscope – lets anyone become a live TV reporter – unedited footage as and when it happens.
Then Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, ( damn I use all 3 – you Mark Z ) all these tools brought all of us closer and removed the physical distances between people.
Isn’t it amazing!
And you can summon a car with your watch. Google Car, Tesla – are making self driving main stream.
Perhaps in another 10 years – we will all be chauffeured by software. Who would have thought 10 years back – we will all be carrying a super computer in our pockets.
We are truly lucky to be living in the future!
