Just to note, this was written quite a bit prior to putting online as it was originally for a book. You'll see this with a few of my posts.
Think about where we already are…
At the time of writing this, I’m sitting at my desk at home staring out at the garden. It’s pouring down. I’m at the early part of my working day (around 7am) and I’m talking with China because that’s just part of my everyday role. I work for the world’s largest LCD manufacturer. You know, the kind of displays you look at all day every day. You might even be reading this on one of our screens. Essentially, we make the actual displays for all your smart device displays, mobiles, tablets, smart home thingy’s, smart watches, laptops, monitors, TV’s, your car dashboards…all of it. While sitting here at this time in the morning I’ve got the radio on. I normally turn it off when the day starts getting busier and the phone starts ringing. The radio isn’t a radio though. It’s one of those Google Home devices that you talk to and ask it to play any radio you want. Current choice is “Heart” because they’re giving away £30k this week and like most of us, I could really do with that right now!
Because it’s raining outside, it’s also a little cold in here so I just asked my home device to turn the thermostat up and warm the house a touch. And now I carry on, typing on my laptop and multi-tasking across 2 displays. While also staring out at the garden and daydreaming a little!
Do you see what I mean now?
Now, having double checked the title, have a think about just the short bit I’ve written so far…
You’re so used to this technology you barely even thought about what I was saying…
You don’t have to go far back in this lifetime to consider what we actually have now versus what we had just 10 years ago. Smart phones. A simple device in our hands that we are all so used to that we wouldn’t know what to do without it. But a device that essentially connects everything else we own. (or as near as damnit makes no difference)
Or how about that watch on your wrist? The one with the display…Oh yeah…that’s connected to your phone also and not just providing you with updates for messages and calls etc, but it’s also monitoring your health right now. Thought about the technology behind that at all?
Or even the fact I’m sitting here with a really slim laptop. This thing is essentially a hugely powerful computer. Capable of doing huge amounts of multi-tasking with absolutely no effort at all.
Now – what about that smart home thing I mentioned. Go back 5 years and think what you’d have said if someone told you that we’d all be just talking to a simple device in our homes and asking it to perform multiple tasks and provide endless information. Instantly! (And at a relatively low/ignorable price)
I can get it to remind me about my meetings, make a call, time myself cooking things, give me ideas on what to cook and of course how to cook it, play music right throughout my home (Important note on this one…absolutely seamlessly without any sync delays between completely separate speakers and amps etc), and even set the temperature to keep me warm or cool me down!
This is insane isn’t it!? Quite literally, we’re already living in the future. All the stuff we dreamed about when we were younger (well, I did anyway), it’s here. Not floating cars or interstellar space travel yet, but seriously…that will happen! When you think about how quickly we’ve progressed even in 5 years let alone 25…Imagine what it will be like by 2030. Or by the time my current 10-year-old is my age. (44) ((In the year 2053))
I’m so jealous of what he’ll have at his prime of life. By which time I’ll probably be all confused and moaning that we’ve gone too far!!!
Considering we are already in a virtual world with headsets that can transport us to completely different environments, countries, worlds and even times, It’s not going to be long before we’re lost in a world of displays and forgetting actual reality. (If we’re not careful)
I’m sure we’ll all have our own ways of limiting things, but let’s face it, we all love our technology and most of us love it when something new and amazing comes out. So long as it doesn’t cost us another mortgage, we’ll have one please.
I’m particularly fond of technologies, however, I still like to keep a little grounded. I’m a watch lover. I hate smart watches and have a fondness for the traditional timepieces that are a little expensive, but far better looking. Whilst I also love a good TV show, I recently asked my lovely other half if we can switch off from the “displays” once a week. We’ve decided that at least one night in the week, and potentially one night at the weekend, we switch off from TV’s etc and have that night dedicated to anything but. We’re reading more, talking more, eating at the table more (rather than on the sofa) and of course inevitably, we're a little more attentive with each other. We had no issues at all but guess what…this simple change in our lives has improved what was already great. If I have inspired anyone reading this to try the same, then this entire website has been worth it just for that. (Assuming you’re still reading at this point!)
Going back to the technology for a moment…Here’s another thing to think about…
Based on the fact we’re now spending evenings without any display time, we can of course record things that we miss. Again…go back a few years…then think about what we can actually do now. How many people actually watch “real time” TV these days? When was the last time you actually had to sit through the adverts?
We are in a time now where I can sit in my living room and flick on something like Sky Q. If I have missed something that I haven’t already stuck on planner, I can press my remote, talk to it and ask for the programme. Then, immediately watch it because I have insane speed fibre broadband which means no lag or horrible buffering anymore. If I don’t fancy anything on there, I can jump on Amazon’s Prime service or even the Netflix service. Again, I can instantly watch, no issues. I can even once again speak to my little smart home thing and ask that to play something on any of the TV’s we want! It’s crazy isn’t it…
I was about to end that there, then thought of another ending point…
By the way, I can be driving my car anywhere at all, press the talk button and ask Google to set my Nest/Smart thermostat to warm the house for me…Mental!
Right, the radio’s now off, the phone has started ringing.
By the way, that phone of mine is over 120 million times faster than the computers they used to land us on the moon!
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