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.
Yes, this morning, I traveled to the future! Now I just hope our upcoming future will do a good use of all these technologies…
