A wireless past

While waiting for my friend yesterday, I saw this in a storefront and it reminded me of my grandad. He would have called it a "wireless" and while not the same, he had a similar one that he would still listen with up until he died back in 1991.

He was born in 1902 and just imagine all the development he saw in his lifetime. Cars becoming mainstream. Flight becoming mainstream. Radio, TV and computing becoming mainstream. Ever think how many naysayers there were along the way before the technology we take for granted now, becoming mainstream?

My grandfather was a mathematically-minded professional, that was an amateur photographer and master wood carver who made high quality polished furniture as a hobby. He was brilliant with his hands and had the technical skills to design and fulfil his plans. He is about as close to a true renaissance man I know and, he was mostly self-taught.

I wonder how many people he argued with and on what topics over the years. I wonder how much resistance he faced and how many said he was wrong. I would say that as intelligent as he was, he continually underestimated the near technology and overestimated the long view.

It would be easy in the 70s to predict flying cars by 2020, but hard to predict a wireless phone in everyone's hand by 1995 and the internet in half the world's home by 2000. There are still no flying cars but how far has the internet and mobile technology advanced? All of the things that became mainstream during his lifetime are now automatically fitted with or rely on the tech as their distribution channels.

While not as sexy as a flying car, Blockchain ledgers are going to leverage the internet and mobile tech that has already piggybacked itself on other tech to empower the world. A new layer of advancement that many still do not know about it understand yet feel confident enough to say, never.

It is incredible to think how many things there are in this world that should never have existed if people's predictions of the future were correct. Pretty much everything humankind has created falls into this category.

When it comes to becoming mainstream, it isn't the "flying car" predictions that do it quickly, it is the technology that integrates itself into the things we are already doing, the infrastructure that develops in the background largely unseen until it is ubiquitous in its utilisation and seamlessly integrated.

When mainstream Blockchain happens, most people in this world will take it for granted, much like flight or cars or the internet. Even us now, those at the forefront of the movement take it for granted and expect it to solve problems that have existed for millennia quickly. Flying cars.

Before that, there are a lot of advancements that will come, a lot of failures and learning and, a lot of opportunity for those who choose to participate.

Many grandads have seen a lot of change, and rejected it before it happened.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(tomorrow will be today soon)}