sci fi days

i like looking at the cities & communities.  in the age of digital reproduction doing virtual tours of say paris or nyc is quite easy.  someone has posted a video tour of the neighborhood you like on youtube.  google maps & streetviews provide another way of taking the grand tour.  i recall using google streetviews to tour bromma stockholm once again.  the first time i visited that municipality was on a family trip way back in 1998. 

but what it is about the media that turns the familiar into something familiar & strange?  i just watched a few videos on youtube that focused on midtown sacramento.  one was a driving tour.  i know these nooks & streets like the back of my hand.  i walk in them all the time.  & yet, watching someone else taking me on the tour was another experience.  

perhaps it might be because we are living in a sci fi age.  this evening anna & i did some errands which involved driving to a home depot & a couple of other stores.  when we parked we put on our masks to go inside the store.  when we returned to our vehicle we cleansed our hands with hand sanitizer.  some stores let in so many people thereby making us line up spaced about 6 ft apart outside & awaiting our turn to enter.  the parking lots for big box stores are enormous & sadistically designed.  navigating them takes the patience of job. 

we all, or nearly all, of us carry phones.  these devices are powerful computers that help us organize & navigate thru our physical & digital worlds.  these worlds are collapsing unto themselves thus creating something brand new.  we parked our VW Atlas, equipped with a navigational system that amerigo vaspucci never could have dreamed up in cold sweat.  i locked our vehicle with a touch of my hand on the handle of the car door.  the SUV made that reassuring chirp that says, all secure!  

anna & i, masked up & ready to go, turned toward the store of our attention.  we passed on older indian woman sitting on a bench in the midst of this chaotic parking lot waiting for her family to gather her up.  while she waited she watched a video on her phone.  some of the vehicles looking for a parking space or leaving a parking space made that quiet hum typical of an electric vehicle.  the digital signs on the sides of the buildings apologized for being closed on account of the pandemic.  some stores are permanently closed.  the newly refurbished movie theater, the one that advertises brand new digital viewing experiences, is closed too because of the pandemic.  some of the buildings are being remodeled with scaffolding, light industrial equipment, ladders & cranes.  

inside the store are cameras & monitors & shoppers using their phones for myriad tasks.  i turned to anna & said, sometimes i feel like we are living in a sci fi movie.  the technology we use & take for granted is mind melting.  i wondered aloud that perhaps the next generation of vehicles will be all electric & tuned to the sound of our voices so that locking the car will require a voice command.  

in the early 1990s i read an article that claimed soon we will be reading on devices that can stream audio & visual.  alarmed, i took that article to one of my professors.  i was alarmed because i love books.  the physical things as well as their contents.  i did not - do not - want to live in a world without books.  my professor said that sounds like science fiction to him.  & yet, that is precisely what came to fruition.  & luckily, books as a physical medium are still present & necessary.

change is gonna come.  whether we want it to or no.  AI will become even greater.  automation will continue apace such as in manufacturing.  factories will need fewer & fewer people to make things.  however these things play out i can't say.  but they are happening & will continue to happen at even greater speeds.  20 years ago i would have flipped my fucking lid if i had seen someone sitting on a bench watching a video on a hand held device.  that is where we are.  now.  & soon the rocket ship, life, will take us to even stranger worlds. 

ready, steady, go