#27 Are We Already Living in the Future?
Maybe so...
In the modern day, we take technology for granted but if we were living in any previous time period in history, all of this innovation would seem like witchcraft and the act of God. Are we, perhaps, already living in the future?
Put it like this. If you wanted to right now, you could open up your phone and browse through a variety of services to do a multitude of things that weren’t even accessible to the richest people 50 years ago.
With Facetime, you can see or talk to someone who lives almost anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds.
Through Uber and DoorDash, you can quickly hire your own personal chauffeur or enlist the help of a butler to bring you food to your door.
Using Spotify or Apple Music, you have the ability to listen to any song ever created, basically for free.
With AI and ChatGPT, you can talk to a robot that can teach you concepts better than your professor and one day, will most likely be your future assistant that will manage your life better than you.
As a side-note, ChatGPT just had it’s anniversary last Saturday, November 30th. It’s been commercially available for 2 years now. Time flies!
With YouTube, you can quickly open up a time machine that can transport you to different parts of the last century. For example, you can watch people roam the streets in Victorian, England in 1901, see interviews of American’s reactions when JFK was shot, and listen to Buzz Aldrin’s first hand experience of what it was like to walk on the moon, while also being able to watch the footage of him doing it!
If you come to present day on the app, you can watch any video on any topic imaginable or listen to conversations in the form of podcasts from world leaders or renowned entrepreneurs; almost anyone that has done anything notable such as the Hawk Tauh girl and take advice from their experiences.
What I’m trying to point out is that when the iPhone came out, we each got access to a supercomputer in our pockets that gave us superpowers.
We are now able to access an abundance of information within seconds which is something that no human before in history has ever been able to do.
I believe that small supercomputers and other modern technology is often overlooked and taken for granted because we get used to new changes quickly as humans. This is also paired with the fact that there is just so much going on in the present day. It can be hard to keep up.
While most technological breakthroughs are unique to the last hundred years, what is often overlooked is how the pace of technological progress has been accelerating throughout history, and how it seems to be speeding up.
Let’s get some context.
Technological progress was staggeringly slow for most of our history. Simple stone tools date back 3.3 million years, but it took over 1.8 million years before fire control emerged.
Another 1.43 million years passed before Homo sapiens began forming complex societies with art and advanced tools, roughly 50,000–70,000 years ago.
The wheel, a groundbreaking innovation, appeared much later, around 3500 BCE -another 46,000 years after the emergence of early complex societies.
Following the wheel, progress began to quicken. Writing systems appeared about 400 years later, around 3100 BCE, enabling the recording of knowledge. Metalworking, including bronze and iron tools, began around 3000 BCE, roughly 100 years after writing.
The development of paper in China 3000 years later around 105 CE marked a significant leap, and the invention of the printing press in the 15th century came another 1,300 years after paper.
Basically, it took a significant amount of time to develop the most primitive and basic technology that we take granted for today.
Now to contrast, let’s look at the technology we have created in the last 100 years. The dates here are more or less when these technologies became of commercial use and started to widely make an impact on the world.
Commercial development of Airplanes - 1920s-1930s
Antibiotics with Penicillin - 1928
Radio and TV - 1920s - 1950s
Semiconductor and Microchip - 1940s - 1950s
Nuclear Power- 1940s - 1950s
The Internet - 1960s - 1990s
Space Exploration - 1960s
Personal Computer 1970s - 1980s
Electric and Hybrid Vehicles - 1990s
The Smartphone - 2000s
Smart Devices - 2000s
DNA Sequencing and CRISPR - 2000s
Social Media Platforms - 2000s
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning - 2010s
It took 1.8 million years for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking, but only 66 years to go from the first ever flight of humans to landing on the moon. Isn’t that crazy?
As a percentage, the last 120 years of technological progress out of 300,000 years since species Homo sapiens has existed is 0.04%.
What I am trying to argue is that in the modern period, technology is rapidly accelerating than ever before in history.
Part of me wonders why it happened this way. I think, and this is my own observations from the limited information that I know, is that it has to do with how knowledge was shared over time.
First, information was most likely past down orally from generation to generation, then the ability to write was discovered which meant multiple future generations could learn from past generations, and then with the invention of the printing press, anyone could condense information into a book that could be absorbed by another person who read it.
Because of this, ideas could be spread more widely and easily.
Then the transistor came along which could save 0’s and 1’s and was a way to have a virtual memory to store information. Then came computers, the internet, social media, and now, AI.
What might of happened is because of this ability to condense information into ideas, and store it, it became easier to have technological breakthroughs and innovate.
Now I’m wondering how information sharing and creation will change with AI… Let’s ask it!
“Yes, there’s more to how AI is transforming the way information spreads and is utilized. Here are additional dimensions to consider:
-Democratization of Knowledge
AI bridges knowledge gaps by making expertise accessible to non-experts.
Complex fields like medicine, law, or data science become more approachable with AI breaking down intricate concepts into digestible formats.
-Speed and Scale of Innovation
AI accelerates research and innovation by processing and analyzing vast datasets in moments, uncovering patterns and insights that would take humans years.
-Collective Intelligence
AI acts as a central repository and synthesizer for collective human knowledge. Tools like GPT aggregate insights from diverse fields, connecting ideas in ways humans might overlook.
Crowdsourcing combined with AI allows for scalable problem-solving by gathering global input and refining it into actionable strategies.
-Evolving Human Roles
Humans transition from being information curators to decision-makers and innovators. With AI handling repetitive tasks, people can focus on creativity, critical thinking, and strategic problem-solving.”
I may have gotten a little off topic from main argument, but I when I think about the future, I can’t help but reflect on what I’ve seen in movies.
Take Back to Future, for example and how it depicted the future with flying cars and hovering skateboards. Those visuals are pretty striking but were most likely used because the audience could see how much the future had changed from present day in the movie.
After seeing that movie though, it made me associate the future with big dramatic changes which would blow you away.
Perhaps the future isn’t defined by flashy visuals. Maybe it’s more subtle, woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. Computers, social media, and AI all have transformed how we work, live, and connect in ways that were unfathomable decades ago.
There may be no flying cars, but the ability to have AI help you on a task or Facetime someone halfway across the globe in seconds is pretty astonishing as well.
When I pause and think about it, we may not be living in the future that Hollywood dreamed of, but it stills surrounds use in the form of technology that shapes our daily lives. The future isn’t a fantastical place-it’s here now, evolving alongside us.
Song of the Week:
Spotify link above and Apple Music link here
I think that the genre I would describe this song as is folk rock. I haven’t heard of this band before, but this song has great instrumentation and I could see it used in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
See you next week,
-Justin