Remember when email was useful? I remember when it was magical!
Time for a story from the ancient times. I had this idea and asked my professor for advice. He said he knew a person on the other side of the world who would know all about it. “This is his ‘email’ address.”
I had never heard about ‘email’ so I needed to learn what it was and how to send one. I wrote my message and off it went. The very next morning I had a reply. One of the best experts on a topic I was keen about had shared their thoughts from the other side of the world, just like that.
In that time, a long time ago as you’ll appreciate, that interaction was magical.
In an instant I understood the power of the Usenet. A while later and with a couple of additional protocols they started calling that the Internet.
I remember in like 1997 or so, my friend’s dad got VoIP working on his computer, and we would talk to random people from around the world. I still have fond memories of my first conversation. It was someone in Australia! All the way on the other side of the planet, and we were talking in real time, FOR FREE! I’ve been a computer nerd ever since.
I had a similar but very different experience. At the beginning of COVID my buddy and I got our ham radio licenses.
One of my earliest contacts was a guy in Japan, over 6000 miles away! Nothing between us but some wire strung up in a tree, and a couple of radios. Using the ionosphere to bounce our signals around the world.
So. Stinking. Awesome.
I’ve been hooked ever since.
It’s funny because it’s almost the opposite of your story, you were using the amazing new technology and infrastructure to make the trip. These days we take that very infrastructure for granted.
It’s fun to try doing it with as little infrastructure as possible!
What time were you talking to the guy in Japan? I live in Japan and am (very slowly as technical and legal japanese are hard) working on my HAM license and would love to chat with my dad in the US eastern time zone. Still not 100% sure about propagation and other such. Thanks!
Heh, that’s nostalgia. I always wonder what the young people of today’s equivalent will be. Probably something quantum.
It’s happening right now with AI. It’s currently in the Usenet phase. A few people understand it and are using it to positively alter their daily lives by improving their ability to gather and filter information, but (ironically) thanks to the internet the vast majority of people are distracted by some niches like generative art or writing book reports. In the next year or two, we’ll start to see mainstream people have AI personal assistants that will have conversations with other AIs. Even without the robotics component, daily life will change. Remember before you could order Amazon same day delivery, or Door Dash a meal? Imagine that level (and better) of tracking and communication for every service you could need, all completely automated. Your sink broke? A perfectly fine plumber can be here in 20 mins, be advised to expect an 80% chance that you’ll see their buttcrack, a 40% chance that they aren’t wearing deodorant, and a 100% chance there will be multiple off-color remarks about the current political situation. Does this bother you? Your AI already knows and an instant deep dive of reviews and social media has found a plumber that may in fact be your soul mate. They’ll be here on Thursday. Your AI queued up a playlist of your mutual favorite songs.
In a slower but possibly as life altering revolution, AR. Apple is starting this with Apple Vision Pro, but this will need to be miniaturized down to a discrete pair of glasses (like Meta Ray-Bans) with 3 pieces of tech that aren’t there yet:
- Even smaller computers (remember when they were the size of shipping containers?)
- More efficient batteries
- A display technology that both adjusts focus depending on the distance your eyes are focusing at while also occluding reality.
I’m confident these will exist in our lifetime, but probably not within the next decade. Once they all come together, the way people experience life will change. Both for the better and worse. If capitalism hasn’t been legislatively reigned in a bit, the ads are going to be insane.
I actually work with ML a lot (at the intersection of my domain with it), though I am not an ML/AI engineer.
I think short-term, ML/AI has a great chance of helping hugely with accessibility issues with users of various systems. My secondary thought is maybe related to elder care, but I’m not sure yet.
I have largely had bad experiences with AI assistants (coding, search, and other domains), except maybe helping with finding/generating code samples for libs/packages with poor or missing documentation (though I go to the docs and code first and those results aren’t always correct).
I do see virtual assistants in various forms being a possible near-term implementation with promise, but most are still heavily trained on and biased to. A handful of languages (in the case of LLMs and such) which limits global appeal.
I am both frightened (the race to market without considering the near- nor long-term costs to society as a whole neither ethics in many cases) and hopeful about the whole thing.
I think you are probably correct, though I also feel we might have something in physics or robotics that has ripple effects opening new avenues. Only time will tell, I suppose. Cheers!
The pre-Google YouTube is probably the closest thing I can think of. And just a time before when everything about the Internet was about profit.
Back when Google were cool.
I’ll admit that I didn’t really get YouTube when I first heard of it. I think justin.tv was the thing that made me realize there was something there, even though I only watched it all of about twice. Then again, I thought music CDs were a scam for the longest time. I’m old.
There is no equivalent, because it’s not new, and even if it was, it’s monetized and manipulative. The internet back then was wide open, free as fuck, and completely new!
I was specifically referring to the ability to communicate in writing at that speed. I guess the telegraph technically existed as well, but it was expensive and awkward.