I Heart Prognosticators

Robert X. Cringely, my favorite technology cheerleader/pundit/futurist has etched the date for the end of commercial television as we know it - July 22, 2015 - 7 years from today.   His Column lays it out in all the relevent market driven, technology oriented forces that will come to bear at that point in time. From I, Cringely @ PBS.org

“I’m not saying here that you shouldn’t buy that new DTV, because it will fit into most any emerging system. But I am telling you that the era of the television programmer, where some guy at the network or down at your local station thinks he knows in what order and on what days the audience really wants to watch TV, well that era will be gone forever, seven years from today.”

This may or may not be interesting to you personally, but what I want to mention that this is one industry that will be affected in this one way.  But the technology inflection point exists for all industries.  Please take 20 minutes and watch this talk by Futurist and Statistician Ray Kurzweil at the ever popular Ted Design conference.

I love the possible future that he lays out.  People often get turned off and react badly to phrases like “The End of Humanity as we know it.” But the way that his ideas for our immediate future play out along the geological time scale leads me away from discussing the ‘if’ of these ideas straight to the ‘what are we going to do when’ conversation.  Watch this, and then weigh in on what ‘The End of Humanity’ means to you.

YB a Human? May be a question we get to answer in our lifetime.  Humanity as a choice, not an imperative.  I think that question exists today anyway.  The choice to be something else in the future may contain less morality than it does today.  More on this later….. For now, here comes the future!