With all the cool stuff we have today - what is the one, coolest piece of tech that just amazes you when you stop and think about it?
Not tech - but I have said for years that the best invention in the world is air conditioning…
But, never mind that - I think the smart phone is the coolest thing. In the past, I have been out in the middle of no where - but still able to see a map on the cell phone to find something. Or, to be in the middle of nowhere and make a call. Or, be out someplace remote and to be able to surf the web - like moderating or participating on the website I am the admin of.
It literally is like the Star Trek communicator… Only, it can do even more than it did on Star Trek…
Everyone once in a while, I’ll use the phone, and then stop and think… WOW! I’ll tell my son how amazing it is that I can do that action - right there… Wherever we are. But, he is 12. He has grown up with this stuff. he is not nearly as impressed as I am. Then, I have to explain to him again how things were when I grew up, and how amazing this actually is…
What is that 1 piece of tech that makes you go “wow”?
I think the smart phone has been transformative for sure, but further than the smart phone is the voice assistants. Not Siri of course, but Google Assistant specifically. Yes having a computer in your pocket is cool and you can access the web and make calls where ever - a dream just what, 30 years ago? But, having it voice controlled and Google Assistant giving you predictive tips based on your data is the icing on the cake. I get amazed every time my phone dings and says “you should leave for the airport by such and such time” or “take an alternate route to work due to this accident” without me even asking for it.
Virtual reality/mixed reality - hasn’t quite hit true mainstream yet, but getting close with how low the price of decent quality, standalone units (namely the Oculus Quest, loathe as I am to mention a Facebook company ) has gotten. That you can be transported to another world just by putting on a visor has fascinated me since I was about 7 or 8, and since then I’ve been hoping the tech would get better and cheaper. I had a Vive and soon about to get an Index; VR isn’t perfect yet, but it’s still immersive and fun, and with greater adoption will come more content.
Machine learning - this is technology that sometimes gets oversold, or is talked about as “AI” or labeled as algorithms, but true machine learning - and specifically generative adverserial networks (GANs) - has the ability to create deep fakes, train neural networks for things like self-driving cars, identify diseases and cancers, perform facial recognition, and optimize various processes across industries. It’s a transformative technology, and can be used for good and for ill at scale, like most transformative technologies.
The “robot” taking away your next job may not be a walking, talking, android that people envisioned back since the early days of sci-fi, but software that trains itself.
But to not end on a depressing note, there’s a lot of good machine learning can do, and most applications of it will still require humans, and will enable new opportunities and minimize the kinds ot boring, repetitive tasks we humans hate to do.
Can I say “telecommunication” as a whole? There are a crap-ton of subsets to that answer, but as a whole our advances in telecommunication amaze me. Whenever I issue commands to a system that is on the other side of the country, I think of the fact that it took Lewis & Clark months to traverse the distance that my fingers are traversing in milliseconds.
I’m going to go with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Kepler Space Telescope … and their evolutionary replacements. If you have ANY understanding of cosmology it’s probably evolved from our improved view of the universe provided by tools like these.
I feel privileged to have been alive to see the birth to ubiquity of smartphones and the internet. Two technologies working hand in hand to change the world forever.
For me, it is smart phones with really good cameras.
I just spent as much money on an iPhone 11 Pro as I did on my last laptop.
I generally use a phone till it dies, but the three cameras, and their quality is, to me a real game-changer. It is not a phone with a camera, it is a camera that is a phone.
I am currently studying Screen and Media with a view to helping people starting Encore Careers (over 50s) learn how to use media for advertising/publicity affordably. This device ( and future improvements) will be a very important to many people.
The smartwatch with almost all the capabilities of a smartphone (excepting those that need a larger screen, of course), plus fitness features: HR monitor, steps, exercise tracking, and all the sensor suite to enable that.
I spend a couple hours a day exercising and more just on the go, so this has been the biggest tech advance for me, since the modern iPhone style smartphone itself. Having a truly useful computer on my wrist is a boyhood dream come true!
And when voice recognition improves, maybe I’ll not even need a larger screen device for more of my day!
Hard decision to choose just one. Internet for sure, but then smartphones…but I’m a radio person so there’s everything wireless on different frequencies.
Maybe it all boils down to the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum in 1800. Not really a piece of tech per se, but so many technologies we use now trace back to this discovery.
) has gotten. That you can be transported to another world just by putting on a visor has fascinated me since I was about 7 or 8, and since then I’ve been hoping the tech would get better and cheaper. I had a Vive and soon about to get an Index; VR isn’t perfect yet, but it’s still immersive and fun, and with greater adoption will come more content.
