I wish they could see this now The world they say is changing oh ‘Cause I was on a video chat this morning
With a company in Tokyo Hey, everyday is a revolution Welcome to the future — “Welcome to the Future”, Brad Paisley
Earlier this year I had one of those “wow, we are living in the future moments.” My family was on our way home from celebrating our daughter’s 3rd birthday. My brother, who lives in Alaska, obviously was not able to attend our party in Tennessee. While driving down I-65, past most of the suburbs of Nashville, we fired up Facetime on my iPhone, called my brother, and he was able to participate in the family tradition of singing to the birthday girl on her birthday. Our 3 year old had a video conference from a moving vehicle, on a hand-held device, with a person 3,000 miles away. How cool is that?
Since FaceTime came out a few years ago, we don’t really think much of video conferencing from our phones. Even Skype has been around for a while on iOS and other mobile platforms. But this one call reminded me of how pervasive some technology has become that you might see in some TV show made in the 80’s or 90’s. Growing up in the 90’s, you would see a commercial every once in a while from Cisco or one of their competitors, showing an office desktop phone with a video display calling someone in a remote office, or some bulky camera that you put on top of your TV.
It makes me wonder… what things that we consider futuristic today, will our kids consider normal 20 years from now?