Friends,
Folks tend to complain about the negativity in the news.
Some people think that all the stories about lying, stealing, cheating and
killing are a sign of the poor health of our society. A perverse urge that
draws us to the events in the tabloids and tells of the decline and inevitable
doom of civilization. I disagree. Of course, I would prefer that the evil
things that are reported hadn’t happened, however, the news is all about the unexpected.
In order to be newsworthy, something must be out of the ordinary. Our baseline
expectation is for things to be good. There is no novelty when people tell the
truth, respect other people’s property, behave honorably and let other people
go-on with their lives. Goodness is the norm, and so, we take the good stuff
that happens in the world for granted. Evil acts, on the other hand, scare,
surprise and scandalize us. And that’s a good thing. Granted, some
extraordinary act of kindness will make the news from time-to-time, and I’m
glad to …
Friends,
How will our lives be different in ten years? We’ll be
older, sure, but what technological breakthroughs will drastically change the
way we do things? It seems to me that we are reasonably good at predicting
incremental change. When I tell folks bandwidth demands will increase, security
needs will be more complex and reliability will be more important, I’m simply
projecting longstanding trends. Electronics get smaller, pixel density gets
larger and processors get faster. Change is gradual… until it’s not. Although
I’m afraid I may not be visionary enough, here are some thoughts of what may be
coming. Windowless cars. As our vehicles start to drive
themselves and talk to other vehicles, traffic will speed-up and the need to
stop (or even slow down) at intersections diminishes. In general, watching this
as a hapless passenger is going to be scary, so why not replace the windshield
with a screen so we don’t have to watch. These windowless cars would rely on
artificial intelligen…