The Window

Introduction

This is just thanks to scientists and developers who have given us a world in which everyone has digital immortality, this poem is just adding to my own, and everything we share online means that people will always have part of us somewhere.

One of the side effects is the ability to talk and see people anywhere in the world at any time, the only slight issue being time differences.

It's almost like the Star Trek handheld communicators we saw in the sixties, but we still can't teleport. That is something that I would love to enable me to go for a coffee with friends in Canada, The USA, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.

These devices give us all a window on each other's worlds, we can show where we are, what we see, and who we meet.

My intention was that this would be a poem but I think I will do that in a separate piece as this has got me thinking about how we arrived at this place.

These are just my observations on how we got to where we are, and what more we would like to see.

So How Did We Get Here?

This is the Wiki take on computer development. We call them tablets, phones and laptops but they are all computers that allow us to do extra things.

They started off as aids to calculation, and have developed from that initial premise.

Although people often cite Babbage's difference engine as the genesis of modern computing, Ada Lovelace is not mentioned on the wiki page but check this article which contains this telling paragraph.

The Programmer and the Prophet

If Charles Babbage was the genius behind the analytical engine, then Augusta Ada Byron, or by her married name Ada Lovelace, was the publicist (and, arguably, the very first computer programmer). She met Babbage at a party when she was 17 and became fascinated by the mathematician's computer engine. From that chance meeting grew a strong, dynamic relationship. Ada discussed Babbage's ideas with him and, because she was gifted in mathematics, offered her own insights. In 1843, she published an influential set of notes describing Babbage's analytical engine. Ada also added in some sage predictions, speculating that Babbage's mechanical computers might one day "act upon other things besides numbers" and "compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity."

This is a great timeline of development in the last century, with some impressive photography.

The thing that amazes me is that essentially everything is still derived from binary forms. I am writing this article on a computer, I press a key and that key displays a letter on the screen, but between the key press and the character appearing onscreen there are so many calculations and conversions that take place.

This is just for a letter, think how that must be ramped up for pictures and video.

Then there is the development of the mobile phone or device. I worked for a mobile phone company between 2008 and 2014 and in that time I saw my device transform from a talk and text device to something I could watch films on and have video calls with, but we still await the teleport option.

Conclusion

While we have seen many fictional predictions about how the future would look and many of those have crashed and burned, but our devices do give us windows into the worlds of our friends. We can find out up to date news immediately, we can use maps to find where we are.

There is one certainty.

Digitally, the world has been brought much closer together, and hopefully, that will eventually bring us a more peaceful world.

This is an old piece I wrote on the subject of digital immortality which I mentioned earlier in this piece.