The Jetson Age or Back to the Future?
“Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy…” this if you’ve not seen or heard it, is the introduction to the cartoon, The Jetson’s that used to come on TV while I was growing up. It was a futuristic show with flying vehicles that fold into a briefcase and intelligent robots, that did a lot of heavy lifting for lazy humanoids.
The Jetson Age or Back to the Future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSptqzfTSSE
I don’t know why I remembered the cartoon suddenly earlier this month but I did and it got me thinking about the state of the tech industry.
With a whole slew of technology announcements happening during the months of September and October in the smartphone, tablet and personal computing industries, many of us hope we are going to start seeing the innovations in design that many of us have been waiting for.
Retro Cool? The Jetsons doing their thing back in the 1980's...
Till date, most notebook computers have always had the same traditional clamshell format from the time they were introduced more than twenty years ago. Smartphones have largely become what Samsung dubbed after the Apple trial, “rectangles with curves.” Most device manufacturers have been talking about wireless connectivity, the majority of products we’ve seen have had annoying power cables attached to them to recharge them.
With the advent of Windows 8 devices, will we finally see laptops that are in a slider design, foldable screens on tablets and true wireless connectivity on smartphones? How many more Apple keynotes will we have to sit through to finally get a product that makes us sit up and take notice, like we did when the iPhone or the iPad were first introduced to us?
One can’t help but wonder why we aren’t yet in an age where we are flying on hover-boards like Marty McFly did in Back to the Future or why we don’t have chutes that bring us straight into our house like we have seen on the Jetson’s in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I would have expected that in the twenty years or so since I saw most of those cartoons or movies, it would’ve been the norm to have a watch that you could speak into, as Inspector Gadget would back in the 1980’s.
With Tony Stark and his alter-ego, Iron Man, we’ve come to used to seeing on TV, all sorts of high-tech gadgetry, which makes you wonder, are we really innovating at a fast enough pace or are we light years behind any other species that exists elsewhere in the galaxy?
For now, what I would like to see at least is a tablet that can fold away into my shirt pocket. Is that too much to ask for?
Ashish Panjabi is the Chief Operating Officer for the Jacky’s Group of Companies and has been running the retail interests of the Group since 2004. An active user of various social media platforms, Ashish also runs his own blog site – http://ashishpanjabi.blogspot.com/ – and has been a blogger since 2010. He is also on Twitter where he is also actively involved (http://www.twitter.com/apanjabi). Aside from retailing, Panjabi has managed the group’s distribution, mail order and project sales businesses. He is also responsible for managing IT-‐infrastructure at Jacky’s. Prior to that, he worked in Hong Kong for a multinational company in the Graphic Arts industry, and was responsible for the Asia-‐ Pacific region. Ashish holds a Bachelor in Science with specialisation in Finance, Investments and Economics from Babson College, USA. He is also a member and former President of the Entrepreneur's Organization's (EO) UAE Chapter, a global organization of established entrepreneurs, with over 8,000 members worldwide.
Greg
Oct 01. 2012
The technology that makes it possible to scan items and codes in the store to find the best deals is one of my favorite advances. Although I do think a tablet I could fold and put into my pocket would be great. I do remember the Jetsons and how all that technology seemed so amazing.