I’m currently on the road and noticed something. Between leaving the airport in Washington, DC, transferring in Frankfurt, arriving in Madrid, and then spending time in the city, I found that most people were walking around staring at their smartphones. I thought this might just be an American phenomena.
There were hundreds of people gathered in the Plaza del Sol the other night. I couldn’t look in any directon and not find people that didn’t have their faces illuminated by a smartphone.
Science fiction writers have been writing about the concept of being “jacked in” for decades. In various books or movies, people put on some type of headgear or suit that links their body to an avatar and they are then able to operate in a virtual world. You’ve seen the concept in The Matrix or read about it in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (the Metaverse) or in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Forget the speculative fiction. I think the future is already here.