Week 16: My Reaction to "Shift Happens" Video

Near the end of the video, a statement caught my eye. It said that it is nearly impossible to make predictions about technology more than 15 years in advance. I immediately thought of an article I read a few weeks ago. The article was about how Steve Jobs had predicted WiFi and the iPad. At the bottom of the article, it had a link to a long speech he made in 1983. I actually listened to the entire speech and was enthralled. Here is the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/steve-jobs-1983-speech_n_1935815.html

What I think is amazing about this article and the attached soundbyte is that people are calling him this amazing “fortune teller” who could predict the future when, in actuality, he was just outlining a roadmap for what he was going to do. He made the iPad happen. He didn’t foresee it - he thought of it, then proceeded to spend the next 30 years doing it.

That’s what’s so phenomenal about the age we live in. You can “dream” and, in your lifetime, make that dream come true. Because things are moving so fast, and people are living longer, you can see the fruits of your labor actually materialize. Steve Jobs was able to enjoy the iPad before he died and he was able to see his dreams come true.

I went to an engineering college in the early 1990s and have many friends who are software engineers. I remember my C++ grad assistant, Das (yes, that is his name, though maybe I’m the only one who gets the joke now) telling me that, in India, many of his friends had their own cell phones. This was in 1994. He said someday, we would all get a phone number when we got our first cell phones and we would have that phone number for the rest of our lives. That was silly to think of because, as a college student, you moved at least once a year and were constantly changing your darn phone number. I told Das that that would be pretty cool. I now have a phone number, that I got back in 1999 in San Francisco, and I do believe I will have this 415 phone number until the day I die.

I think it’s wonderful what we’re accomplishing in the world today, in biotechnology, astrophysics, chemistry, and computers, and I have no doubt that further generations will solve the seemingly baffling or irreversible problems ours and previous generations have caused. I believe the problems will be solved because human beings are a truly remarkable species. I grew up seeing streets and beaches littered with trash and recyclables and, just 30 years later, I see an exponential change in people’s awareness about our Earth and what we’ve done to it and what we need to do to fix it. Even my parents, born in the 1940s, recycle and seem very conscious of their effect on the environment.

Yes, I believe we will persevere, and we humans will be around a long time because, like Steve Jobs, you don’t have to sit back and make predictions, you can actually make things, great things, big things, happen and live to see the difference firsthand.