[Editor’s Note: This post by BigOven CEO Steve Murch originally appeared on Facebook. It’s republished here with his permission.]
We are living in the future we once talked about.
This weekend, I went on a bike ride yet was able to answer the phone and talk to the person on the other end and then call Heather to relay the message without slowing down or stopping or even holding any phone in my hand. It was a beautiful autumn day, so eventually I stopped and snapped a photo, then shared it with friends essentially for free, getting likes from some friends across the globe that I haven’t seen in more than thirty years.
The weekend before, I was able to drive my car 70+ miles on the highway without touching the accelerator pedal once, only the steering wheel, looking at a map of the destination and knowing exactly how long it would take to get there, calling up songs I wanted to hear by speaking to the car… inches away from a driverless car.
This weekend we had a plumbing problem at home. Same-day delivery* and just ten minutes of YouTube tutorials later, I was able to fix it better than the hired-expert who tried unsuccessfully to do so a few days ago. While I was fixing it I listened to a customized playlist that had been built just for me, helping me discover a few new great tunes I never knew about.
Today, my iPhone understood my dictation via text perfectly, even correctly recognizing that we happen to spell our eldest son’s name with two L’s, not the more common single-L form. Somehow it learned that about me. These moments are at once both entirely ordinary, yet altogether magical.
Sure, the news can get depressing at times, but it’s worth stopping for a moment and just marveling at it all. Futurists and science-fiction filmmakers definitely got this wrong though: we’re not supposed to still be wearing jeans.
——
* OK, so it wasn’t perfect — “same-day delivery” didn’t live up to its promise as the package was misplaced by the delivery person; we’re still waiting for parts for that plumbing job so I ultimately had to buy the part old school style… but I’ll give Amazon credit for getting close.
