What about the future?
When you realize you just traveled through time…
Let’s paint the picture…
Thursday morning, leaving my flat to get to work. I realize my bus pass is expired… Damn! I have to buy a new one downtown. But, to go downtown, I have to take the bus, and without any spare change in my pockets, I won’t be able to buy a ticket…
Easy, I just grab my phone and send a text to the bus company, only with two letters : GL (for Grand Lausanne). It says I need a ride for the whole city of Lausanne. That’s it! For 3,60CHF billed on my phone subscription I have my bus ticket sent in text…
Arriving to the main bus station, I don’t need to talk to any human, I just slip my bus card into the machine, I choose the monthly pass, and then I use my debit card to pay the fare.
I’m now waiting for the bus, checking my phone…
I see that a website is selling a micro-computer for a very good price. It’s the Raspberry Pi 3, a credit-card-sized computer with a 64-bit quad-core CPU, a gig of RAM and all you need to connect to the world (WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, HDMI, USB…). It’s sold with a few accessories for only 45€!
When I started as a designer, the one-meter-tall & super expensive graphic workstation I had was far bellow this spec sheet!
I want this little geeky “toy”, so I buy it directly from my phone, in less than a minute, paying with PayPal.
Jumping in the bus, checking Twitter, I read something about a comic book who looks interesting. I grab my tablet and launch the book store app, I search for the title and buy this comic book. I pay the $0,50 using my app store account, just using my fingerprint on the sensor to validate the payment.
Now I can read this dysptopian comic book about a dark and ultra-techy future…
And that’s how I thought about all this story.
In just a few minutes, while commuting, I used several ultra powerful devices (even if only palm-sized), buying several stuff, paying using several means and in 3 different currencies, thanks to a seamless user experience, allowing anybody to complete any task or action from anywhere, at any time…
Sometimes we just need to step back and realize how fantastic it is.