Personal essays
On taking a trip to the future
Internet
My first ever podcast was more than twenty years ago for O’Reilly (Tim not Bill) called “Distributing the Future.”
The title came from Tim’s favorite William Gibson quote, “the future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed.”
At the time I was working for Tim running two web sites for O’Reilly media. I mostly worked from home in Ohio but every once in a while I would come to California to meet with other people from the team.
The people in California had a different view of our websites because they had, what was then, high speed internet.
In Ohio, I didn’t.
I had better access than most of my neighbors. Many of them were still using their phones to surf the net. I had a dedicated line. The speed was so slow, that for really big uploads or downloads it was faster to send a disk containing the data through the mail.
If you have high speed access you don’t always think of those who don’t.
It means that you design very pretty graphics that are rather large because they don’t take any time at all to load on your machine.
Fortunately, my colleagues were aware of this - many other companies weren’t and designed these overly complicated web pages that looked like crap on my machine as they waited to load.
Yesterday a friend told me the speed of his internet connection - mine feels fast enough. His is much faster.
High speed internet was not and is not evenly distributed.
Flying cars
I spent three days in San Francisco before heading south to Apple’s conference.
I walked a lot in San Francisco and everywhere I went these Waymo vehicles would be driving past.
You, like me, may not come from the future so you may not have seen these.
They’re easy to spot. They have all sorts of navigation equipment on the roof getting information in every direction.
When one goes by, you initially do a double-take. No one is driving.
We’ve heard Tesla talk about fully self driving cars and driverless taxis for years. There always coming next year. But here is a fleet of cars from a competitor that is already on the streets.
I first saw Uber and Lyft in San Francisco years ago. That seemed like an odd concept as well. Someone I didn’t know would pick me up and drive me somewhere in a car that they maintained.
In San Francisco I can get most places by walking or taking a bus. There are also street cars and light rail. I don’t think I’ve ever taken an Uber or Lyft or even a taxi on my own. But this Waymo thing is intriguing.
The ride
My friend Jonathan had encouraged me to try a Waymo and so I thought about taking one from my hotel to the train station. It was about a twenty minute trip and Waymo was going to charge $21 which is about the same as an Uber or Lyft.
I texted Maggie that I was thinking of taking a Waymo ride and she replied, “I don’t think it’d be catastrophic or anything, but would you feel the same about yourself afterwards?”
That’s exactly right.
And that’s what convinced me.
How would this change the way I see the world and see myself.
I booked the ride and the car showed up on time. It told me where to wait and updated me on where it was. About five minutes before my ride I saw it pass by. Kind of cool.
The car pulled up in front of me and I unlocked the doors from the app.
I was going to sit up front but decided that I didn’t want to risk the car driving away with my items in the trunk so I sat in the back with my suitcase and backpack beside me.
The ride was smooth and uneventful. The only issue I saw was that when the Waymo wanted to change lanes, other cars were fairly aggressive about not letting it in and so it took blocks for us to move into the left lane for a left turn.
How do I feel?
I feel as if I just rode in the future.
I recognize all of the privacy concerns and data concerns with this type of car, but I think of how useful these would be for people who can’t or shouldn’t drive anymore.
It reminded me of that scene from the Superman movie where Superman swoops down and rescues Lois Lane. As they are flying away, he says to her, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
She says, “You’ve got me? Who has you?”
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 272. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe