The Future is Here

Between bouts of self-pity and pithy but inneffective ranting about my personal life, I work as a bartender.

However, I would, if pressed, admit to being a freelance geek. An engineer dispossed of his real work in a vain effort to capture something (freedom?) he can't explain or define well enough to know where to look for it.

However there are times that my geekiness shines through so blatantly that it must be reflected here, and this is one of those times.

As a preface, I read Gizmodo daily. If you have never been tempted to ask questions that invoke numerical answers when your friends show you their latest gadgets, Gizmodo is probably not the site for you. To wit: You can like tech gear, and talk about tech gear, and not be a tech/gadget geek. I have coworkers who are perfect examples of this, crowding around visitors when they display Gameboy SPs, and comparing cell phone functions between orders during the dinner shift, but never displaying any real knowledge of technology's direction, pacings, or innermost workings.

In any case, today in particular, my sense of the coming future is brought into high relief by an article Gizmodo posted linking to HaloLabs.

It references three tech demo videos of a new product, a motorcycle airbag worn as a vest by the rider.

Those of you familiar with SnowCrash or affiliated works (or even many other works from the sci-fi genre) will immediately be reminded of the balloon-rider safety systems these authors invoked as a means of explaining high-speed impact survival in the early part of the 21st century.

Well, the future is now. It is the early part of the 21st century, and those devices are on their way to release.

Rarely does a product or device so easily cut through my normal stoicism about the steady but slow march of progress and remind me that we are living in a world of rapidly developing technology. I find myself suddenly glancing out the window as if I expect to spy a flying car or nearly self-sufficient mobile android.

Ok, so I'm excited. The future is here!