Robots of the Future
Have you heard about the new robots of the future? Do you remember watching Rosie on the Jetsons as a child, wishing you had one in your home?
History
The Industrial Revolution was the area of time from 1760 to around 1840 where manufacturing techniques moved from hand tools and individuals making products one at a time to machines and steam power making products that were identical and in mass quantities. Our current consumer culture is still based on these techniques and we could not sustain most of our life styles without this period of time. As I think about things that have happened in my lifetime I wonder, “What they will call the last 30 years?”
Thirty years ago, the personal computer was still a rather new and very expensive thing. It was mostly large companies that used them and the internet was in it’s infancy. The world of computer connectivity was based on “Bulletin Boards” that each had their own telephone number! If you wanted to connect to a particular game or service, you had to know the telephone number, hook up your telephone to your computer, have the computer dial into the system, and use it. If you wanted to go to another service, you had to hang up the phone, get the new number and start the process all over again.
Remember the old Internet Sign On Sound?
The connections were slow as well. Most of the time, the connections could only handle small text files. Graphics, music, and certainly video were not something that most people even considered getting through a bulletin board service. As things progressed and more computers were connecting to these services, the internet was born.
The internet allowed you to connect to any bulletin board service just by know their “web address.” The bulletin board services began to connect their systems to each other so that you could dial into a local number and connect to a different service from another state or even country. This allowed you to use these systems and not pay the long distance bill required to connect to the distant service.
As more of these services connected together, the opportunity arose for companies to provide the connection to local customers to the internet service. With that, national service providers such as CompuServe and America Online (AOL) were born. These services introduced small graphics to the internet and charged by the hour of service. There was a base rate that each person paid in a given month and that allowed them a certain number of hours on the internet. They were charged for each hour of over usage. AOL made their name by mailing out packages of software that allowed people to sign up for their service and receive anywhere from 10 to 40 hours of internet usage for free.
As speeds increased, and computer prices came down, more people were connecting through the internet and using email. Speeds increased and the race for speed, which seems to continue today, began. As faster and faster connections became available, more content became available. Websites for photos became available and the transition from film to digital photography happened seemingly instantly. Videos began to become available on the internet and cellular phones seemed to move from talking devices to internet appliances.
Today
Today, everything seems to be connected to the internet. Cell phones, Cars, GPS and Navigation systems, even our Televisions and Refrigerators have internet connections. We can watch the television programs we have recorded at home while we are traveling and our refrigerator can automatically order our milk for us when we get below a half-gallon. The internet is here to stay and the reality it, the uses for it are just now being discovered.
| I was watching television recently, and saw an ad for Amazon Echo. This device intrigues me. This is the type of device that Star Trek promised us back in 1966. At that time, the computer still was large, bulky, and expensive. But Gene Roddenberry had a vision for a computer that could be talked to and it would respond. It was called Science Fiction, but that fiction has become a reality in recent years. We now have hand-held communication devices and computers that seem to know everything that can talk and can talk to you in a normal sounding voice. I am sure the early computer developers and internet developers had no idea where their concepts would take the world, but it is clear that the world has been changed forever because of them.I don’t know what history will call this time in our lives, maybe the Technology Revolution, or the Communication Revolution, or maybe even the Internet Revolution, but I know that our world is very different than it was just 30 years ago. All the information we ever want is at our fingertips with a few clicks of a mouse and keyboard or, apparently, just a few voice commands. |
Predictions for the Future
These concepts are the reason our company exists. We want to preserve the reality of this moment so, when others look back in time to see what life was like, they are able to get a real picture. There will be no question as to what things were going on and what life was actually like because it was preserved in real time by people experiencing it first hand.
Time will move on. Things will change. Of that you can be sure! The question is . . . What will others think about our technology and lifestyles in the future? How will they view it? Will they even remember?
How much fun would it be to fill out a “Message to the Future” letter to yourself making predictions about what will happen in the future? I wonder what other robots will be available in the future to make our lives easier.
Get your own time capsule today to fill out this fun letter to yourself. Get a Baby, Wedding, or DIY Time Capsule here.
Making Milestone Moments Count,
– Mark
Trackbacks and pingbacks
No trackback or pingback available for this article.
Leave a reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.