By most measures, Friday was actually just another day. It just happened to be a day where I was reflecting on just how much things have changed in the 20 years since I left the euphoria of college to join the ranks of the working world. Despite the negativity we're bombarded with by the talking heads, the world is a pretty awesome place compared to 1998.
Friday was a roundtrip day from the San Francisco Bay area down to Los Angeles to deliver some training. Firstly, how incredible is it that air travel has become as banal as a bus ride and it is perfectly reasonable to commute 800 miles for a day of work (in about the same time as it takes to commute to work in the bay area).
Upon arrival at the Oakland Airport, I strolled to the terminal listening to my discman (aka my pocket sized super computer, my pixel phone) on my magical headphones without a wire and began listening to my mix CD (aka streaming playlist from the cloud with access to not only my music, but literally all the music in the entire world). I entered the terminal and casually bypassed the ticket counter because my pocket super computer already had my boarding pass in the form of some crazy pixelated square. Not everything is as smooth as 1998 as I still waited patiently to take off my shoes and stand in an X-Ray chamber as though I was under arrest.
Flight is still a mystery to me, but planes are not inordinately different than before the turn of the century. My rental car was equally un-noteworthy, except for the fact that I could push a couple of buttons and have it wirelessly befriend my pocket super computer within about 20 seconds. My car was now able to also play all the music in the world, as well as become a mobile telephone with voices in stereophonic sound.
I then turned my pocket super computer in to a Thomas Guide with maps not only of Ventura County, but, if it became necessary, a map of every square inch of the world. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an invisible hand sketched out a route to my destination (like an AAA TripTik), and kindly told me how long it would take me to get there (taking in to account a realtime traffic report). The hand then pushed a little arrow along the route as I drove to make sure I didn't stray from my path. Nifty.Sitting next to me was my personal stenographer that scribed a short message (aka, a text) that I said aloud, and then, at the speed of light, ran off to deliver the note to my wife. She sent my assistant back with a series of cute little faces, some with hearts. 😃😍😘
My day was spent training some new hires on, quite ironically, why we should avoid using technology to communicate. I also taught the team how to schedule a project using sticky notes.
My return trip was as seamless as my morning, except that the invisible hand found a faster way to get to the airport using back roads, as though it was a local with all the cool tricks to avoid traffic.
It's a good thing I had my 1.5lb laptop to type this on the plane as I doubt the airline would appreciate a desktop machine in there. My seat mate on my right managed to cram a VCR in to his pocket super computer and watched Infinity War, while the fella on my left leafed through all the front pages of every newspaper in the nation on his.
I'm not going to get all philosophical about whether all this convenience is actually good for us, but I will say that it freed my mind to consider penning this little post. If all this awesomeness happened just in the past 20 years, I'm excited to see what 2038 will bring.
All for now....