Forward Momentum: Welcome to Fw:Thinking

technology podcast called tech Stuff. I am Joe McCormick, and I'm a writer for the Forward Thinking video series Excellent and so this audio podcast is a companion piece to that video series that Joe was talking about. And in case you haven't had a chance to check it out, what Forward Thinking is. It's a video series that takes concepts that are going to become really important to us

in the future. They may be important to us right now, but we're trying to kind of project our minds out to the future and think, how are these things going to all over time and what does it mean as far as our daily experience goes? So, uh kind of thinking about, well, well, what what's the bright shining promise of the future? Right right? Sort of? I mean the concept is that we are currently living in the incredible

future right now, So what does the actual future hold? Yeah, yeah, and it's it's kind of one of those fun brain teasers that you put yourself through because no one really has the answer to this. I mean, these are things that are possibilities that could become a reality down the road, but right now, of course, we can't definitively say what the future is going to be like. So we get to kind of play prognosticator, which is turns out to be a lot of fun, it could be a lot

of work. To Joe, you've written some of these episodes already, so you've kind of had this experience of all right, here's the information I have about this topic, how could this develop in the future. What's your experience like so far doing that kind of thing. Well. With each episode so far, we've tried to break it down and talk

about a few things. First of all, um with each concept or technology to discuss sort of where we've come from the history leading up to this point, in the state of technology today, or of how humanity deals with this particular difficult concept or whatever it is. And then we tried to extend into the future a little bit and say, how's this going to work in theory when we have, you know, greater capabilities than we do today. And that part can be a lot of fun because

I can't remember who it is now. It was it Arthur C. Clark who said, any you know, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic um and and that's what makes it kind of magical to think about how far we can go and how far we've already come. Sure, And then of course in each episode we also want to imagine, well, if if these crazy unthinkable advances really do manifest in in the way we live, what's it going to mean for us? And how is it going

to change what it means to be human? What This is one of my favorite sort of topics and of all topics that I've covered in various podcasts and articles, this idea of the human experience and what it means to be human in this changing world, this era of technology we live in that is changing so rapidly it becomes a challenge to even describe it. Uh kind of ties into that concept of the singularity where it's literally

impossible to describe the situation because it changes constantly. To the point where one moment is different from the next. We're not there yet, clearly. But one of the wonderful things and sometimes challenging things about writing about technology, or podcasting about technology or doing a video series is that by the time you're finished, it's already changed a little bit. So that's one of the things. Yeah, right, it's like buying a computer and taking it home and it's obsoletely

before you can get it out of the box. But that's one of the things that's exciting about tech. It's not something that we shy away from. It's something we embrace because this means that our future is going to be phenomenal, and we're trying to project our minds and to get a grasp on what that might be. Knowing as we start out that our vision of what is going to come and what actually will happen may not measure up in a one to one ratio, but but

you know, it's still an interesting experiment. No, you're right, there are going to be things that we cannot even take into account right now that are going to play into our future. But that's what's so awesome about this. So I'm really genuinely excited about working on this project with you guys. Yeah, absolutely, So I thought it might be fun to talk about a couple of the topics that we're already looking at in these early episodes of

forward thinking on the video series. So one of those topics that that we we tackled was this idea of the Internet of things. And Joe, do you want to give kind of a kind of a top level look what the Internet of things is? Sure? Well, uh, the Internet of things is in a way, we're already there. Um, it's a way of looking at what the Internet is

now and what it's going to become. Um. Basically, when we think about the Internet, we usually think about it as something that interfaces with a human At some point. You know, you are using your laptop, or you are using your tablet, or you are using your smartphone. In any case, you're you're connecting to the Internet to get information or to upload information, and at some point it's

routing through you. The Internet of Things is a world in which, um, so many objects around us become connected to the Internet and they both upload and download information independently. That our entire environment is sort of it's transformed, um, right, that we have there's this sort of ecosystem of technology that's in a lot of cases doing stuff without any

input from us at all. Sure. Yeah, So this idea of inswers and some form of actuator, whether it's a physical actuator or a digital format of an actuator, are are taking measurements about the environment, about us and how we interact with the environment and making changes dynamically on the fly. It's a really exciting concept and we're going

to really dive into that in a future episode. But other episodes will involve things like three D printing, which involves using a printer to create actual three dimensional objects. That's manufacturing. Yeah, and we've got one of those here at our office, so we've been able to play with them. We've been making toys because you know, we're all kids at heart. So while we probably could be making prototypes of the next future technologies, most of us are thinking,

I want an action figure of myself. But that's totally valid and as far as I'm concerned, yes, yes, because I like to have my action figure stand in for me for meetings. Uh, most people haven't picked up on it, which I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult. But then we also have things like autonomous cars. We're

talking about the future of space travel. And what's really exciting to me is that what we hope to do down the road is involve you, the audience, in helping us decide which topics we should talk about in this series. We want to really understand what people are really excited about. What what is it that they dream about for the future. I mean, besides jet packs and food and pill form and you can include those two, we'll talk about that

as well. But we want to have all those topics come in from the audience so that we can respond to them and make this not just a presentation but a conversation, because I think it's just as important that we hear their input and and really make this a full dialogue. Uh. And that way we all start to shape the future together, and that to me is truly exciting. So guys, if you are interested in this show, well here's what you need to do. On March one, we

are launching the website Forward thinking dot com. Now that's f W Thinking dot com and that's where you're going to be able to find our videos are podcasts. You're going to find blog posts. Who knows what other stuff is going to pop up there over in the future. And really, we're going to tackle the future in a way that has never been done before, and we need your help to do it. So join us on this adventure. We're looking forward to it. And well, I think that

wraps up our introduction. Guys, we are really looking forward to this. Join us on our journey, and we will see you soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places