I grabbed this quote from MobilityBundle in a different topic that I found interesting. Not wanting to hijack the discussion of 4th amendment rights within that topic, I decided to create a new topic based on this portion of his quote.



Technology is advancing at a huge rate and I'm often amazed at what I currently take for granted. What are some of the things that you think are the most amazing things in the world?

I'll start off. Whenever I forget to take my cellphone with me, I'm forced to consider how in such a short while the cell phone has become so necessary to our daily lives and I'm amazed to think that the cell phone was basically introduced 30 years ago but that the small portable cell phone was only introduced around 14 years ago and that it wasn't until 2007, just SIX years ago that cell phone technology exploded into a whole new dimension with the invention of Apple’s iPhone. How amazing is that?

I have a few items to share on this matter.
I look forward to sharing my opinions, when
time permits, 'tis lunch time, my shepherd's pie awaits.

It has little to do with technology, but the birth of a child is easily the most amazing thing in the world...

That, and the Zig-Zag Illusion.

I still marvel at how a car engine works for more than 60 feet. It's all magic to me. I marvel at the creativity that splashes around within all this technology. The new animation is incredible in films, 3-D is wonderful and the whole credit card thing is pretty amazing.

Remember when a government or corporate person would answer the phone and go look up a physical file to get an answer for you?

My Ipad is the latest amazement, and my small Bose wireless speaker is better than any of those huge huge monsters from decades ago. Life is good!

To me, there are two frontiers: (1) the bleeding edge, what-smart-guys-are-doing-in-a-lab frontier; and (2) the frontier of what might have been possible for a while, but finally practical / affordable.

As for the bleeding edge stuff, I'm biased by my job as a patent lawyer. Without revealing anything confidential, I think it's safe to say the coolest patents I've worked on have been in biotech / nanotech. With the benefit of hindsight, I think the major theme of the past 30-40 years of biological research has been to develop techniques to translate biological or chemical questions into mathematical questions. For example, I worked on a few patents that involved mathematical techniques for "in silico" drug discovery -- using math to identify good points on protein molecules to inhibit them, for example. I also worked on patents in the reverse direction: nanomanufacturing.

Just one kind of mind blowing consequence, in the near future (15-30 years?), this story will be feasible: you feel under the weather one day and go to the doctor. Turns out, you have such-and-such syndrome. In the past, there were five or six treatment options for such-and-such syndrome, and your doctor would have to tinker with different therapies to get one that works. But soon, the doctor will just get a blood sample, do a genetic sequencing, do some fancy math, and have your medication manufactured for you atom-by-atom... in a cost effective and timely fashion.

As for the second frontier -- stuff that isn't cutting edge but is just starting to become affordable -- I'd probably go with the classics: computing resources. For example, data storage. My first hard drive was 10 MB and a bit larger than a loaf of bread. Now, you can pick up a 1TB flash drive that fits on your keychain for about $600. Expensive, sure, but well within the grasp of the average person. Ditto with processors. Ditto with high bandwidth, low latency communication channels.

Nowhere are these innovations more felt, I think, than cell phones. (Or perhaps more accurately, I should call them "mobile devices," since the phone aspect has been steadily dwindling in importance.) On exciting thing that's just on the horizon -- like in the next year or two -- is a new computing paradigm that centers around mobile devices. The developers explain it (or demonstrate it) better than I would. But I'm excited for that kind of thing to hit the market.

Finally, this might be a little more social than technological, but I'm glad to see the world in general moving to more electronic systems (as opposed to paper systems). For example, I work for a small law firm, but most of the time I work from home. My wife works in the educational publishing industry, but she also works at home. Traditionally, both of our jobs involve shuffling massive amounts of paper. But for us, our jobs involve shuffling massive numbers of PDF files.

The positive impact on our lives is enormous: we save about 1.5 hours a day in commuting; we can be healthier by using some of that time to exercise, or having time to actually cook instead of eat in restaurants; and perhaps best of all, we can travel wherever and whenever we want. We just got back from a two month trip to Barcelona and Rome. Last year, we spent a couple months in Chicago to help my wife's sister with her firstborn child. The year before that, another three months in Rome. The year before that, two months in Australia. All the while, my clients didn't even know I was gone. My phone calls were forwarded to wherever I was via the internet, things were still filed in the patent office (which has an electronic filing system), etc.

Brave new world.

Life is the most amazing thing in the world. And the most amazing thing in the universe is the universe itself.

That I'm here right now is the most amazing thing!

My wife's put up with me and my mentalism/illusions for over 42 years of marriage.

That is REAL magic !