The world has Moved On. That's the message I received loud and clear this week as I watched the future unfold in real time.
A bit of an introduction. I am a mid-to-late-range gen-Xer, born in 1977 and quite vintage at this point. I grew up on Star Wars, baseball cards with gum in the pack, riding bikes off homemade jumps with no helmet, and getting into a whole lot of mischief that my parents never knew of, as long as I emerged from the woods at some point around dinner time without any visible cuts or bleeding. My childhood was decidedly analog, with vinyl records, snowy antenna-fed TV, Atari and NES gaming on the carpet, and trucks that needed gasoline poured down the throat of the carburetor to get 'er going. Fast forward to the mid-to-late-nineties when I graduated high school and entered the workforce, and things were beginning to accelerate rapidly. Windows 95/NT/2000, Palm Pilots, the dot com boom and bust, Comp USA/Best Buy/Circuit City, raves and electronic music, and many other seemingly advancing technologies and ways to participate in consumerism told me that although I wasn't sure where it all was headed, one thing was certain: the world was moving on. It was up to me to decide if I was going to be on board or not. Many of us made it and function well amongst the confused boomers, snarky millennials, and sad or angry zoomers.
And so it has gone for us members of my generation. We get used to how things are, technology leaps ahead, and we adapt or become forever lost, with outdated skills such as VCR programming or AOL IMing. Only until now, there has always been enough analog to hang onto. There has always been a usb adaptable turntable to play your records on. A cassette tape adapter in your buddy's car stereo to play the mp3s from your player that he likely garnered from unsavory sources with names like Napster and lime wire. This time though, it feels different, like there just isn't a use for those go-between connections anymore. The times where these were effective are gone; we don't want a go between, we want the new world, and we want it set up and organized right for us to live our best lives, all of us.
Those 1984 Ford F150's that still need a little laughing gas down the throat to get going- they are now decidedly antique. American companies that made them are now decidedly the underdogs, or are filling a role propped up by government programs, lobbies, and unions. The new guard is comprised of visionaries, entrepreneurs, and adventurists willing to take long term gambles in funny money time for the possibility of success in the true long term. They don't all make it; Nikola is down nearly 65% from it's high and will likely never succeed at bringing a product to market. Tesla has reached yet another inflection point where the lack of continued innovation is no longer just an annoyance that can be marketed away. Tesla has potentially met their technological matches, globally, and at home in America.
The companies that have been methodically building real businesses are now poised to launch, launching, or have launched, and they are doing WELL. Their products are astoundingly well designed.
Photo Credit: Rivian YouTube
AI, improved processing speeds, massive neural networks, new protocols for coins, and available design lessons-learned have allowed these companies to truly make ground breaking improvements to all transportation sectors, while improving energy consumption and lessening environmental impact.
Photo Credit: Reuters
I'm getting that 1999 dot com feeling again. The same way I felt in 1999 when I was working at The Good Guys electronics selling Compaq computers and Palm Pilots. The world is moving on in so many ways. It is my belief that fifteen years from now, three quarters of cars on the road will be electric, many countries will ban individual drivers in cities, blockchain coins and altcoins will rule the financial transaction world, Non-Fungible tokens or NFTs will be rolling forward strongly in contracts and sales, and space travel to the moon and asteroids for resource recovery will be commonplace. America's new titans will be ushering in these times; pay attention to their morals and value propositions to make sure its the America you want to live in. Seems young people today have an issue or two with our previous titans of industry; it's up to us gen-Xers to quietly mold the rest of the future from the background as we like, so the zoomers can have a chance at the living lives as rich as our parents had as boomers, but in a new, exciting, and less harmful way. All Americans should take notice this week, and consider how well (or if) they are adjusting to the new norms in front of us.
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