Never as in recent years, technological innovation is having an extraordinary impact on our lives, on our habits and, above all, on our work. Should we look to the future with optimism or suspicion?
The latest technology that has changed our life – It took just 12 years (this is the age of the iPhone, the first smartphone to have established itself on the market) for the smartphone to revolutionize our world, influencing so many aspects of our daily life that today it would be difficult to think of doing without it.
In his 2007 introductory speech, Steve Jobs had already foreseen everything, even anticipating some of the fantastic things he allows us to do. We can listen to music from huge libraries with tens of millions of songs, watch movies and TV series nonstop, stay connected to the Internet constantly, and have access to all human knowledge in seconds. Yes, the music was one of the important aspects too. You can listen to the track on the iPhone and it was a big magical thing back then. As of now, you’ve Spotify and other platforms where musicians are putting their work. With the interesting strategy (Upload tracks on a certain schedule, buy Spotify plays & stay very active with the followers) their tracks go viral.
Think of Google Maps: we are so used to being guided to our destination that we would struggle to move without. Or to car sharing: we can use the telephone to find a free car, reach it, open it and drive it. Let’s think about voice recognition: we can talk on the cell phone and ask it to give us directions, take notes or start a call.
And, of course, let’s not forget about messaging: WhatsApp, Telegram etc. they have drastically changed the way we communicate. And the next ones that will shape the future. And what does the future have in store for us, even the near future?
Let’s try to list a few:
Self-driving cars are about to open the doors to an era in which everyone, even the youngest and those who cannot or do not want to drive, will have total freedom of movement. Not only that: every year about 1.2 million people die in road accidents; self-driving cars seem destined to put an end to this massacre that affects especially the youngest.
3D printers, increasingly widespread, will revolutionize the manufacturing industry, allowing us to build objects that were previously unthinkable. In the not too distant future we could buy a product on Amazon and print it in real time in our homes.
Artificial intelligence, to which we have dedicated an article in the past, has made enormous steps forward and has become part of our daily life. When Spotify or Netflix suggest a song or movie we are interacting with some AI. The same happens with the virtual assistants of our phones or home devices like Amazon Alexa, to which we can talk to order a coffee or schedule an appointment. Artificial intelligence is used in facial recognition and in fact is a key ingredient that makes self-driving cars possible.
