Friday Notes #91 — The Future is Now

Here’s a little peek at a recent early morning on a rare occasion when I was going to work downtown, in person, taking a break from my remote work routine.

It’s early in the morning; I put my coat on, get my iPhone, AirPods and backpack, and head to the metro. On my way to the office, I have to go downtown old Montreal and buy a used iPhone Xs for one of my sons. I pick up my iPhone 13 Pro, enter the seller’s address in Maps and ask my way by transit. It will take 40 minutes to get there. Next, I open Matter, a read-later application, select an article about the war in Ukraine, and tap the play audio button. After a few minutes of listening, I get an audio notification about my first meeting in the morning, an hour from now. The audio reading resumes shortly. In the metro, I try to focus on the audio while looking around at people wearing their AirPods and staring at their iPhones. I get out of the metro station, and ten minutes before arriving at the iPhone seller’s building, I share my position with the seller so he knows I’m close. He responds: “thanks; I’ll be waiting in the lobby.” Upon my entry into the building, the guy is there, says hi, holding the original box with the used iPhone in it; a quick inspection reveals the perfect condition of the device. It’s a deal. I opened my bank application and entered the required contact information to send him the money electronically. He says, “thanks, have a great day.” I need to go and head to my office on a walk before my first meeting starts. I put back my AirPods and resumed the audio article. A few minutes later, I got an audio notification telling me the guy had just accepted the electronic transaction. Then, while still walking to my office, I notice an art-deco building that I really like on the other side of the street. I pick up my iPhone to snap a few pictures of it before resuming my short walk to the office. The office building is just the other side of the street; I look at my iPhone and notice the focus mode is turned on and set to “Work.”. From now on, my iPhone displays only a subset of home pages and my notifications are set to a minimum.

This little mundane story is full of technology use cases that weren’t possible a few years ago and could only be seen in sci-fi movies. I find this to be so cool. I’m so grateful to be able to take advantage of all this. Who knows what an ordinary early morning will look like ten years from now?

Friday Notes #89 — On Travelling Before & After The Internet Age

Just try to remember what it was like traveling before the Internet age. Now, think about your last trip. What a world of differences.

Numeric Citizen IntrospectionJF Martin