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A story of slide rules, heroes, and robots – and a future we need today

Thirty years is a tiny sliver of rings for a two-thousand-year-old Bristlecone Pine, one hundred and twenty lifetimes for Monarch butterflies, and a single solitary generation of humans.

The length of a generation is disputable, but 30 years is a common measure. In my life, generations coincide with miraculous transformations, or metamorphoses: birth, marriage, and retirement (and death perhaps, although I won’t be updating this article with that date).

I stand in awe of the changes I’ve seen in the first two generations of my life and emboldened by the potential of the next. 

Generation 1: Birth (age 0):

I emerged from my cocoon long ago, in 1958, a time when monkeys and dogs were flying in spaceships. Beatniks altered their consciousness while they jazzed up the place.

Kerouac was my hero, and Bradbury and Vonnegut were my best friends. They taught me to love to imagine, and now that I’m living in the future, I can touch the reality they only dreamt of. Wouldn’t it be something if I could tell them what it’s like today, with honest-to-God shiny silver rocket ships and robots? That we actually walked on the moon? Would they understand any of it?

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

 — Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law

A slide rule was the computer of choice before electronic calculators were born. We wore them proudly on our belt, snug in their leather holster, poised for a quick draw. We were the kings of nerds before nerds were kings.

Childhood is an awkward memory I happily watch through the rear-view mirror. School playgrounds and girls are best left to the psychologically and physiologically strong. I was neither of those until college when I figured it out and found eternal love a dozen times or more. I also built a computer.

The siren call of silicon urged me toward the rocky shoals of the nascent computer industry, but the need for reliable income altered my course into the safe harbor of business. Kerouac I wasn’t.

Generation 2: Marriage (age 33)

Anyone can run a business, but finding the right girl is an art. It takes time and patience, and more than a little practice. Back in the ’80s and ’90s it was an analog endeavor, usually involving cocktails, so it malfunctioned often.

Our wedding was recorded on a VHS tape and immortalized in stills on dozens of tiny rectangles of Kodak film which the local drugstore happily and profitably sent off to be developed in duplicate. We waved goodbye from the window of an elegant limousine that we had reserved with a phone, tethered by a curly wire to the wall.

The world was our oyster, and it was filled with shimmering pearls. We were in love, riding the waves of social and technological magic like deft surfers on soft water. I sold the business, hopped on the dot-com train and clipped a new mobile phone into its snug holster on my belt. Change was our wine, our future was infinite.

“I’m a peeping-tom techie with x-ray eyes … 
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades”

 — Timbuk 3 (lyrics)

Our rocket ship of bliss launched us like a bullet through multiple jobs, states, and homes, two daughters, and fistfuls of gray hair caused by said daughters. IBM PCs begat Apple Macs, Microsoft Surface Pros, personal assistants, phones, tablets, doorbells, refrigerators, and cat toys. Cars drive themselves without the help of backseat nagging, and sensual electronic voices remind us to reorder our pills.

Now we zoom with our friends and buy bagels and bowling balls online, and marvel as they magically materialize on our doorstep the next day. It’s truly an exciting time for billionaires.

Generation 3: Retirement (age 63)

Pity the Monarch butterflies who live almost their entire lives as terrestrial-bound worms and dangling pupae. They undergo just one metamorphosis and the exhilarating freedom of flight lasts mere weeks.

My first two generations took me to heights I could never have expected, and I hope to continue soaring like the Monarch through my final one. I’ve been lucky though — and honestly, most of it is luck. While I soar, there are billions of others grounded from poverty, lack of opportunity, health, genetics, handicaps, oppression, politics, religion, and a multitude of factors they can’t control.

I plan to watch the next 30 years unfold in a cascade of unprecedented change. Today, I hold in my liver-spotted hand far more computing power than the UNIVAC supercomputer built at the time of my birth, just two human generations ago. Imagine what we’ll hold in our hands thirty years hence. 

We have the power to change the world. Let’s use it to make the world a better place for everyone. 

“The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.”

 —  Justin Trudeau

Automated transportation can offer mobility to the physically challenged, deliver goods for less, and carry life-saving nourishment into hard-to-reach villages.

Genetic corrections using the Crisper CAS-9 gene-editing tool (and its descendants) will correct and prevent debilitating birth defects and diseases, and help us live longer and more active lives.

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence will liberate us from dangerous jobs and automate the mundane, shifting focus to more meaningful pastimes.

Basic income, a logical outcome of automation, will ensure all humans, regardless of circumstances can rise above poverty and live in dignity.

Food production will feed the hungry from transgenic crop modifications, lab-grown proteins, and land reclamation.

Social connectivity will blossom in ways we can’t yet imagine, fostering meaningful relationships, social and physical activities, and companionship for the aged and homebound.

Broadband access from every community on earth will offer boundless educational and informational access to everyone, eliminating differences and distances, and leveling the playing field for our children.

Fusion and alternative energies will deliver clean, low-cost, and carbon-free electricity to every corner of the globe, keeping us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and the next generation of students studying late into the night. 

So much more can be accomplished: Safety, affordable shelter, clean water, reduction in CO2 gasses, racial and gender equality — the list goes on. With human ingenuity and technological advancements, there’s no limit to what we can do to help ourselves and protect what we love, like bristlecone pines and Monarch butterflies.

My hope

My friends Bradbury and Vonnegut would be proud to know their great-grandchildren made magic.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that we learned about in high school psychology, shows that when we meet basic physiological and safety needs, we can focus on self-esteem, respect, and community. When every citizen of the world’s basic needs are met, tribalism will fade away and be replaced with equality, community, and connection. We’ll be healthier, happier, and compassionate.

This is what I hope to see in the next generation, before my ultimate metamorphosis.