Saturday, October 25, 2008

The future is upon us!

Almost every day I am astounded at what an amazing world I live in. We live in a science fiction story that only seems normal to us because we have watched technological magic accumulate over the last few decades to the extent that we simply take for granted that it is possible, for example, to tap incomprehensibly vast stores of knowledge from our living room, or to buy a piece of plastic a quarter the size of a postage stamp that could store more books than you could read in your lifetime. I think there's a strong tendency after a century of such amazing technological progress to simply take as given that such feats are possible. I think we forget to take a step back and realize that we live in a world where we can do magic.

Today I had an hour long, face-to-face chat with a wonderful old friend from my time studying in America. The fact that I was sitting in Chiba and she in Washington State wasn't an issue at all. I made faces with her three year old daughter and spooked her cat, and I showed her around my apartment and she showed me around her house. Aside from having to keep in more or less one spot to be visible, it was little different than sitting across a coffee table from each other.

How can you live in a world where such a thing is possible and not do a groovy little dance each morning when you wake up?

I want to share one more thing - my friend took two pictures of me from my video feed that, when strung together, make me look like I'm doing a fantastic Garth Algar impression. I thought I should share.

Party on, Wayne!

Excellent!
Posted by Benjamin Stürmer at 10/25/2008 11:44:00 AM

2 comments:

  1. rinOctober 28, 2008 at 10:12 AM

    lol, this is great!

    P.S.: I have this OMG-I-do-live-in-the-future-feeling quite often. even when riding DB trains!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Benjamin StürmerOctober 28, 2008 at 3:14 PM

    Trains do it to me constantly!

    How is it possible that people just take for granted the fact that when we want to go somewhere far away, instead of sitting on a horse for three days or walking for a week, we can just spend a couple of hours sitting in a box on wheels that zooms over the world at incomprehensible speeds? Don't even get me started on airplanes. Every time I'm near an airport and see a plane take off, and think about how cool the physics are that make that trick possible...

    I think the world would be a lot more fun if we all tried to maintain a healthy sense of wonder.

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