Tomorrow’s Future Today
A few weeks back I had something unique happen.
My girlfriend, Alec, and I were driving in San Francisco on Scott and Sacramento Street when we saw something we had never seen before. A caravan of driverless cars driving down the road. It was the first time we had ever seen driverless vehicles, and it felt like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie. But, it wasn’t special effects. It was real.
One of my favorite parts of living in San Francisco is getting to be in such close proximity to the future. Right now, the technology of self-driving vehicles is very new and still in its early stages. However, in my opinion, this will become normalized all over the United States, and eventually the world. Self-driving vehicles will become the norm. In the future, the sight that Alec and I saw of the cars driving themselves will become as normal as seeing a Honda Civic driving by.
It is cool being able to witness the future. When we saw the Cruise Driverless vehicles driving down the road, I felt like a caveman when he first saw fire. In complete disbelief that it was even possible.
There have only been a few times in my life where I have felt this feeling, of complete disbelief that certain things were technologically possible. The other time that comes to mind was using a VR headset in late 2021. Before trying VR, I never understood the hype. Why would anyone want to experience a virtual world? Is this world not enough? Plus, I had a hard time believing that it would feel real. Boy, was I wrong. It was an incredible experience. I was mesmerized by how indistinguishable it felt. My brain was processing this digital world as if it was the world around me. It felt almost as real as the world. The exciting part is that this technology is still in its infancy, with a lot of growth ahead.
Seeing tomorrow’s technology in action is really exciting. It makes me feel very antsy to see what the future is going to hold. Will it turn into a dystopian nightmare? Maybe, but I don’t think so. The future has some exciting opportunities ahead.
Technology is growing at astronomical rates! Imagine being Grandma and Papa, having seen such changes in their lifetime. What’s next? We’re living Star Wars!