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Which cutting edge technologies will become mainstream?
Sometimes I think the reason we’re fans of technology is because we are willing to expose ourselves to new and frustrating experiences just for a small glimpse at the future.
So much of what I write, and have written for a couple of decades, is to help communicate the frustrations, possibilities, and workarounds involving brand-new technologies, for people who are pretty close to the cutting edge. We are not generally the sort of people who wait a few years for the technology to settle down and become boring and reliable. Instead, we’re in line at the Apple Store hoping for a chance to live in the future today.
Even when I was a teenager, I wanted to learn about computers because I knew they would be the driving force of the future and I couldn’t wait to get there. But now, as someone in his mid 40s, I’ve discovered another aspect to this effect: I’ve seen those dreams of the future come true.
Put simply, people who embrace new technologies are the beta testers for the rest of the world. And the weird, tech-only experiences we have today are the experiences that everyone else on the planet will have in a few years. All you have to do is wait, and what seems specific to our little subculture will become universal.