October 20, 2015

 

Today Catching Up With Tomorrow

We are living in the future!

This week marks a cinematic milestone. Tomorrow, the 21st of October, 2015, at 7:29pm Eastern time (4:29pm California time), will be the precise moment when Doc, Marty and Jennifer arrive in a flying DeLorean from the year 1985 (as depicted in the film Back to the Future Part II). In that movie, there were some really fascinating technological achievements displayed in that 1989 version of 2015. And with a few exceptions (flying cars, hoverboards), we are living, or on the verge of living, in a world where much of that technology is a real part of our lives.

The smartphone alone accomplishes much of what would have seemed unbelievable 26 years ago. There is not much depicted in that film that we have not yet accomplished or are not working steadfastly towards accomplishing. We might be approaching an 'innovation event horizon', where we are no longer able to be innovative, but instead we focus on being efficient.

Some examples: these technological advances which were once considered futuristic science fiction are all part of our reality: Cloning, replicating materials (a.k.a. 3d printing), life extension, space colonization, time travel, flying cars, giant fighting robots, virtual reality, flying robots, hyper personal advertizing (ie Minority report), etc. It can't be long before even flying cars are a part of our reality...when the technology of drones mixes with self driving cars, self flying cars are sure to follow.

If you have doubts that we're living in a radically futuristic age, then here are some recent headlines to back up my argument:

For the time being though, where we're going, we still need roads.

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