Carl and I were talking last night about technology in a general fashion. We're usually talking .NET, but it turns out that we have other interests as well.

Have you ever stopped to think about what a weird time in history this is? I think the thought hits me every few months like a bowling ball launched unexpectedly from a canon in a hallway closet, but we're living at a time that is pretty uber unique.

I'm not an academic, so I'm given to making crap up as I go along without trying to back it up with authoritative sources, and I lack the jaded aspect that many "know-it-alls" have when talking about such things which means that I sometimes sound a bit wide-eyed and naive, but I must say that it floors me that we're living when we are, which is during the birth of technology on this planet. Of all the times in human history that any of us could have been born, we just happened to wind up here.

It seems like the emergence of technology is something that only happens once given that technology becomes its own medium for transport, and gradually gets its fingers in everything. It becomes its own source of growth, and spreads itself like a virus. We're currently watching the virus get its start.

That we're in it this early on means that we're seeing some strange stuff. We're getting to see technology put people out of jobs without being able to replace those jobs. We're getting to see the hints of advances in medical science that our children, or maybe grandchildren, will get to enjoy, but that we just missed by "this much" [holding fingers apart by about an inch]. Many of us will still be alive when the world's population (supposedly) peaks around 2050, meaning that we'll either get to benefit in a large way from having a huge base of customers to whom we can sell our crap, or that we're really going to get a swift kick to the scrotal area when we deal with the reality that there isn't "enough [resource X] to go around."

Hang on. Thought collecting time.

I think I'm posting this because it's good for a little bit of perspective. When you get caught up in yourself, your blog, your job, your GPS-enabled car, and your iPod, it's easy to forget that we're just looking at the absolute beginnings of what can be done with technology. I think that for us (people in general), technology has arrived the way a lump sum lottery payment might. We were extremely poor yesterday, but now we have all this stuff, and we don't know what to do with it. We're running around and trying everything we possibly can, but we aren't doing much good with what we have because we don't know yet how to put it to good use. It's like what would have happened if the Beverly Hillbillies had struck silicon instead of oil.

I think I might also be posting this because I get depressed every once in a while about the way 2001 arrived. It wasn't even remotely like the 2001 that Arthur C. Clarke had us all buying into. I don't blame him for getting it wrong, though - the technology is absolutely here to do everything that humans did in his 2001. It's been around for a while, really. But, like my dentist once said to me in response to a drooly and incoherent impromptu speech I gave to her on how dentists charge way too much dough for their services (it was drooly because she had big metal dental things stuck in my face (I think she was trying to shut me up (seriously))), "Well, Rory, all I can say is that people make their choices."

I'd like to think that all the focus on gadgets and useless software is just a phase we're going through as we play with all of our newfound stuff, and that at some point in the near future, people will make better choices about what to do with technology. I love my MP3 player, but I'm getting tired of thinking about the fact that there's R&D money going into the next generation of entertainment technology.

Do any of you think that 26 is too old to go back to school? I'm having a lot of fun with what I'm doing right now, but I have to admit that I feel a strong desire to help do something that would push technology forward and to a better place, rather than doing more work automating HR's "Business efficiency action initiatives."