People are incredibly clever. We’re always coming up with new things to do and experience. For example, sidewalk chalk art is cool enough, but lately people have been figuring out how to make it look 3-D. Who came up with that, and more importantly, how? It’s totally cool!
(I won’t use any pictures here, but you can always do this search to see what I mean)
We live in a world of incredible convenience. While we may not yet have flying cars or personal helicopters, we still have so many things that people just 50 years ago considered crazy, far-flung science fiction. I remember watching Star Trek as a kid and thinking their communicators were so cool! Well, today we have those, only better. Kirk and Spock never could have played Angry Birds on their communicators. And they had to wait at least another hundred years or so to get iPads (see Star Trek: The Next Generation).
In seconds I can send a message to someone that it would take most of a day to reach in person, even with modern modes of transportation. I can hope on a plane and within a few hours reach places it would have taken weeks or months to reach just a hundred years ago. Private companies are now providing logistical support to the International Space Station, and within a few more years space tourism will become a reality.
I carry in my pocket more computing power than was used in sending a man to the moon. I can, from my living room couch, get a 360-degree view of Piccadilly Circus within a few years old. I can get live images of Dartmouth Harbor.
I can watch video of incredible art being made with no more than a light table and sand…
My entire music collection can fit on a little box about the size of a pack of gum. Movie producers can create entire cities and actors from pure imagination. With a little training and practice people can do amazing things with their pictures. My children can create stop-motion videos.
I can post my thoughts and have them read within seconds by people around the world. I can have conversations with total strangers. I can meet a woman on another continent and court her without even meeting her. And I can talk for hours with a friend in another city, with or without video.
We live in a wonderful age, and the fact that so many people abuse the amazing gifts we’ve been given should not diminish that wonder. There will always be evil, but there are also a great many brilliant, talented people doing amazing things and sharing them with the rest of us.
The world rocks.