Technology is everywhere now. It's right up there in our faces and it's lying on our car seats next to the Twinkies. It's in our houses and on our farms. It's under our car hoods and down our wells. Grandmothers have cell phones now. Babies have breathing and heartbeat monitors that NASA would have been envious of a few years ago.
Tech is now everywhere, and it's obvious.
But there is something that bothers me about that, and I think I know what it is. My iPhone taught me.
Technology does wonderful things but it's too...it's not...it's just...there. It's there, and it shouldn't be. I want it, but I don't want it...there. Why do we have to see it? Or even know anything about it?
The answer is: we don't. And I think we'll get that right in the future, because I can already see it coming.
The iPhone oozes technology for sure. Ultra-integrated. 3G Broadband data. GPS. Motion sensors. Proximity sensors, Accelerometers. The high-tech buzzwords are in there, all of them.
But there is something different about this device and I think it's an important distinction.
Steve Jobs calls the iPhone "an artifact from the future", not because of the technology that is crammed into it, but because of how that technology interacts with it's user. That interaction takes place in the user's domain, not the phone's.
It's natural. The technology that it contains is easily harnessed by the user because it's all hidden. Only the human interface is visible. You use your hands and voice and eyes, not a stylus or buttons or cryptic commands. I am amazed at how complicated this device is on the inside and how simple it is on the outside.
I think the best way to describe what technology will be like in 50 or 100 years is this:
It will be pervasive, yet subcutaneous.
It will be everywhere, and hooked into everything, in a way that we even now can't fully imagine. But it will also be so hidden you'll forget it's even there. It will be as if the laws of physics have changed, our world will work differently and it will just seem natural.
The power of such technology is limitless. If we ever stopped to think about it, we'd wonder how we ever got by without it. But eventually, we won't even bother to stop to think about it, any more than we stop to think about how our ears work, or why.
Here's a great illustration of my point, splashed up on the silver screen:
In the movie WALL-E, the robot WALL-E represents our current technology. You can see exactly how he works and it's a mess. He makes simple jobs look very complicated.
Obvious.
EVE, on the other hand is graceful, almost comically streamlined. But she is rippling with the most amazing technology, that only gives itself away by it's effects on the world.
Subcutaneous.
I think the future will be more like EVE, and less like WALL-E.
Incidentally, EVE was designed for the movie by Jon Ive, Apple's head of design, the same guy who led the design of the iPod, iMac, and iPhone. Coincidence? I think not. The movie producers knew what they wanted and they knew he could pull it off. Why? Because he already has.
2 comments:
Like I said before, I think you like camping and hiking in the wilderness because it's a respite from technology. Too much of a good thing is just too much. Of course, you do bring along a GPS, cell phone, digital camera................
Have you ever seen this British show called "Connections" from the 70s? We've been getting it from Netflix. It's basically about just this. The guy talks about "technology" from 100's and even 1000's of years ago that we don't even think about now. I think you'd dig it.
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