What beholds our future?

By Dan Barber

Every week I read a lot of news from many sources, and from the news that I read this week I would like to make a prediction.

I predict that a new technology will be invented within the next year and shortly thereafter will be made available to the public, and because of the clever marketing of the company who owns the new gadget, people will camp out on hard sidewalks for a week or more just so they can be the first person in line to buy this new miraculous ‘doodad.’

What kind of prediction is this you might ask? Not much of one, because we see this scenario in the news quite often.  What isn’t in the news is that the ‘doodad’ has become obsolete almost immediately because the same engineers in the same company who created ‘doodad’ has now come out with a new and improved ‘widget,’ which the company’s marketing folks will convince hoards of people to pitch their tents on Main Street so they may have the honor of being the first person on their block to replace the old ‘doodad’ with the new ‘widget’… am I boring you with this story? I’m certainly bored.

Some technology is really great.

When I was returning home from Vietnam, I needed to call home from the Philippines’ to let my wife, Diane, know that I was on my way home and would be there in a couple of days. The call only took a couple of minutes, but cost me nearly a quarter of my weekly “tax free” income of a Navy second class petty officer in 1972. We didn’t have the convenience of free calling cards or cell phones with unlimited minutes. 

A massive improvement in communications was just appearing on the horizon.  Pay TV (cable) was a major source of debate between politicians, and the broadcast executives representing the 3 national networks, and the Federal Communications Commission.  Public meetings were even held so the average person could let their feelings on the subject be known. See how that has worked out. 

We can now sign up for “cable/satellite” TV, the Internet and our home and cell telephone service all with one company!  Because of the new technology of cell phones you can even save a bit of money by not having a landline phone at home.  The monopolistic telephone companies can no longer charge us whatever they can get.

Now my wife can talk to her sisters and cross-country friends on her phone for hours, or until the battery dies, for just one low monthly fee of just a quarter of a week’s pay. I also have hundreds of channels to surf through on my big flat-screen high-definition TV while at the same time surfing the World Wide Web on my cell phone, or any number of new thing-a-bobs I might be willing to camp out to buy at any number of big box discount department stores. But because of where I choose to live, I would have to drive for nearly an hour to get to one of those big box stores… a fact I am rather proud of.

To the horror of those network television executives back in the late sixties, because of all this new technology I can record what ever I want to watch, even out in the middle of the Mojave Desert without a 100’ tall TV antenna, whenever I want to watch it… and I can even fast forward through commercials.

Sometime in the future those unsightly telephone, television and electrical transmission lines that scar our landscape will be a relic of the past when every newly constructed building, development or home will be required to be self-sufficient with its own power source from a combination of solar, thermal and wind power. Perhaps some other new source of power will be discovered and put into use. Also, the kids can also create their own TV programming, filmed of course in front of a large mirror with their latest edition of a smarter cell phone with a video camera application and broadcast those programs world wide, via the latest social media program.

This can only be possible if the “public utility” companies, energy companies and governments can figure out a way to get out of the way of each other and let it happen.