A thought occurred to me the other day…

Maybe it’s good to be bored

Remember when you were a kid and you thought you might literally die of boredom? What if that was a good thing? What if boredom was critical to our childhood development…and as an adult, what if it still is?

Of course, the problem today is that I have more Apple devices than I have perishable food items in my fridge. Always on. Always connected. Always Addressable. But never bored…and maybe that’s a bad thing.

I took my mom to the dentist yesterday and as I was waiting room, I tried something. I put my phone in my pocket and I stared out the window – into space. I allowed myself to become bored. In doing so, I think I allowed myself to be the unwobbling pivot at the center of an ever-revolving universe; to be still…

Now I’m bored, time to go watch the rest of Stranger Things 2 😉

I was just thinking that I ought to be able to raise my camera (iPhone) and ask a question like “where am I?”. GPS is never going to be perfect and signals bounce off buildings so what if you could combine GPS with a visual input to determine location? I can also imagine something basic like pointing my phone at a car and asking Google “What kind of car is that?”. Last but not least I can imagine pointing my phone at an insect bite and asking “Should I go see a doctor about this?”. That would be cool…like living in the future.

Someone tweeted the other day that in the not too distant future people might say (when referring to cars) “I can’t drive this, it’s a manual”, but they’ll be referring to the steering wheel and not the transmission. And that got me thinking…define future. A year? Five years?

After a childhood spent reading Popular Mechanics, I had become jaded after the vision of the Year 2000 failed to live up to expectations. But lately it seems like “The Future” is finally arriving and more importantly it’s accelerating. I have “nephews and nieces” who range from one year to twelve years old and I keep wondering which of them is going to be able to, need to, or want to operate a motor vehicle. Potentially none of them. Even if Level 5 autonomous vehicles are still a few years off, Uber/Lyft is here to stay.

I also think about the next generation and what their interactions with technology will be like. Every other tech article is about “AI” or “ML” and Intel claims to have built a 17-qubit processor. Okay it has to operate at almost absolute zero degrees, but it also wasn’t that long ago that my computer took up half my desk – now it fits in my pocket (sort of).

What will their buying habits be like? I’m guessing they won’t go to malls. I’m guessing they’ll just buy everything on Amazon, and I mean EVERYTHING including prescription meds, liquor, homes, repairmen for the homes, food delivery, and even Cars…assuming car ownership is still a thing in the future. Either way, I hope cars fly in the future.