Skynet
As recently as five years ago we'd go to Blockbuster when we wanted to rent a movie. (To my knowledge the El Camino location in Santa Clara was one of the last Bay Area Blockbusters to go; it has since probably become a new addition to the four Starbuckses built preposterously close to one another on the strip of El Camino Real that runs through Santa Clara.) I believe it was during our last ever Blockbuster run that we ran into one of my roommates as he was walking out of the store. I asked him what he rented and his hesitation as he pulled the case out of the little plastic Blockbuster bag automatically made me wish I hadn't asked. It was Step Up 2: The Streets. (To this day Tiny, Yanagi and I still talk about the awkwardness that hung in the air at that moment.) It disturbed me to no end to know that the roommate whose name I've since forgotten was going home to watch Step Up 2: The Streets alone in his room, across the hall from mine. Who knows how long it would have been until he killed me in my sleep if I hadn't moved out when i did.
This past Saturday I felt like staying in bed for a while, so I reached over to pick up the phone and TV remote from the nightstand, opened Google Play, rented Captain America: The Winter Soldier, turned on the TV, and cast the film to my big-ass TV via Chromecast. In just a few short years I went from enduring awkward encounters with roommates at the door of the local Blockbuster to renting movies in a matter of seconds without ever leaving the bed. This is the very definition of progress, and if it's yet another step on the way to the Singularity and the subsequent rise of the machines and me being killed in my sleep by my sentient phone, I'm OK with that.
This past Saturday I felt like staying in bed for a while, so I reached over to pick up the phone and TV remote from the nightstand, opened Google Play, rented Captain America: The Winter Soldier, turned on the TV, and cast the film to my big-ass TV via Chromecast. In just a few short years I went from enduring awkward encounters with roommates at the door of the local Blockbuster to renting movies in a matter of seconds without ever leaving the bed. This is the very definition of progress, and if it's yet another step on the way to the Singularity and the subsequent rise of the machines and me being killed in my sleep by my sentient phone, I'm OK with that.