We Live In The Future

The computer on my desk has one TERABYTE of space, and it’s almost half full - ten years ago I didn’t even had a gigabyte of space in my main machine. I carry a computer … in my pocket … that I can use to surf the web anywhere. No wires. And I can use my pocket computer to show pictures of our vacation half a world away to a friend over a dinner of seafood. We’re hundreds of miles from the coast. And I can use this same device to call around the world at any time.

In a few months, I’m going to get on an airplane and fly from my home in Alabama to London. I’m going to FLY. Through the air. And I’m going to be there in a little over 10 hours. A hundred years ago to get from London to New York took like two weeks via steamship, and then you had to travel by train and horse carriage. It could take a month or more to travel that distance, but I’m gonna do it in 10 hours.

When I was a kid, our TV got 3 channels on an old 19” TV that took minutes to warm up. My TV today has close to 500 channels, all of them perfectly clear and some of them in beautiful high-definition. Oh yeah, and it’s 42” wide, less than the width of a ream of paper, and turns on almost instantly.

I never go to a bank anymore. My paycheck is electronically deposited to a bank that has one physical location … in Texas, more than five hundred miles away. And if for some reason, I do have to deposit a check, I can scan them in at my house and send them by computer to be instantly deposited.

People, welcome to the future. We’re here. And it’s just going to get cooler.

Comments (0)

Interested in why you can't leave comments on my blog? Read the article about why comments are uniquely terrible and need to die. If you are still interested in commenting on this article, feel free to reach out to me directly and/or share it on social media.

Contact Me
Share It
Transition
Names are emotional things. They mean a lot to a person, even though that person may have been given that name before they were even aware of it. We inhabit that name, making it a part of our identity. But what happens when you need to change that name? When that name no longer fits the person you are? This is an issue faced by many, but especially those of us in the transgender community. Even if you are otherwise happy with your name, since in most languages names often have very strong gendered connotations, it is not uncommon for transgender people to want to change their name to better match their gender identity. Here’s the process I used to change my name and markers, where possible, with the following services. A lot of this is based on my notes I made during the process. In posting this, I am hoping to help others who are changing their names know how to better navigate this byzantine process.
Read More
On Changes
I haven’t put this on the blog yet. We’ve been so busy making all this happen. About all I did was update the location line. But since it’s been a few months and things are finally settling down, I can update the blog as well. After (for me) twenty four years in Alabama, in July, we moved to Fort Collins, Colorado.
Read More
Transition
As of today, it has been 573 days since my last post to this blog. Prior to this period, the most I had ever gone without posting here was a few months, going all the way back to 2005. I have literally never gone that long without blogging in my entire life, dating all the way back to my LiveJournal and OpenDiary days. More than a year and a half has elapsed. And it would be easy for me to say that my job was taking up all of my time, but that is only a fraction of what was actually going on. As it turns out, a lot can change in a year and a half. A whole, whole lot. But I suppose we can start with one very obvious one. My name changed!
Read More