In a previous life, I flew…a lot.
For 12 years I was on an airplane every other week, spending three to five days in another major U.S. city, growing our business. Along the way I witnessed what seemed like one technological pinnacle after another. Each one amazed me…for a while.
One of the first was when “the Internet” meant CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy. I remember sitting in front of my Macintosh SE, absolutely fascinated as a grainy black-and-white satellite weather map slowly loaded one line at a time.
Then came business travel luxuries. Cross-country flights became bearable thanks to my Sony Discman and a zippered case holding 20 CDs. I was living large.
Soon I discovered I could make airline and hotel reservations on my little Mac. Could life get any better?
Then came the iPod. Suddenly every CD I owned, along with TV shows and music videos, fit in my pocket.
I remember seeing “Laptop Lane” at airports with its proud slogan: Peace, Quiet and a T-1 Line. I was convinced those guys were about to become billionaires.
Hotels eventually added a second phone line. Think about that for a moment. I could connect my laptop’s modem and still make phone calls without unplugging it. I honestly wondered what technological miracle could possibly top that.
Then Wi-Fi arrived.
Then air cards.
Then no more dial-up.
My Palm Pilot deserves honorable mention too. It wasn’t connected to the Internet, but I could peck out emails with a tiny stylus and later “sync” everything with my laptop. I felt like James Bond.
One of my favorite moments came during a taxi ride. I always requested cabs that accepted credit cards because charging expenses to my company American Express meant no expense report.
When I didn’t see the giant card reader bolted to the dashboard, I figured dispatch had made a mistake. At the hotel, however, the driver plugged a tiny square into his phone, swiped my card and smiled.
The first thing I did in my room was log into my online banking account—another technological miracle—to confirm I’d just received a free cab ride.
Lo and behold…the charge was already there.
Other former pinnacles? VHS tapes. Camcorders. Pagers. Two-Way Pagers. MapQuest. BlackBerry. Car phones. Cell phones the size of lunchboxes, followed by my Nokia phone the size of a hot dog. Floppy disks. Digital cameras. Then cameras built into cell phones.
Each one felt revolutionary.
Which brings us to today’s pinnacle: Artificial Intelligence.
I use AI every day, and it has become incredibly valuable. But I suspect AI may become another technology most of us use without really understanding or having the energy to learn more.
Remember conversations like this?
Then:
“Have you seen a CD? It’s smooth as glass…no grooves! How does it play music?”
“A laser reads it.”
“Uh…OK.”
Now:
“How does the recycling plant sort cardboard, plastic and metal?”
” They use AI.”
“Uh…OK.”
Maybe that’s not the perfect example, but you get the idea.
I’ve been fortunate to watch an incredible parade of technologies march through my career, each one claiming to be the future.
AI certainly feels different, though.
Will it eliminate millions of white-collar jobs?
Should I learn to weld?
Will I someday need an AI-approved forehead identifier just to buy groceries?
I don’t know.
I suppose I could ask Grok or ChatGPT…
…but I don’t want to them on my bad side.
