It has always amazed me how technology has continually moved our society. The past century the human race has seen more advances than the prior 2,000 combined. If it weren’t for visionary people many of the gadgets we take for granted today simply wouldn’t exist.

While it is commonly accepted that art imitates life, it is also obvious that life imitates art. This is no truer than in tech. Even the authors of the late 18th century provided creative fodder for the inventors of the 19th and 20th.

I’m a huge fan of portable tech devices. I owned a Palm Pilot years ago and have owned a mobile phone for the past 20 years. This on top of the pile of other gadgets I have acquired has only increased my thirst for tech.

Since the release of the iPad I have been salivating for one of these gadgets. The simple yet flexible functionality of the device is simply astonishing. Can it do everything a notebook computer can? Probably not but then again it isn’t supposed to.

I have realized that my desire for an iPad most likely stems from the science fiction I grew up on and the possibilities they teased us with. For years I watched the crew of “Star Trek” carry around amazing portable devices that could allow them to develop incredibly complex mathematical equations and comprehend the space-time continuum. While a great deal of what they spoke was complete fabricated jargon it still didn’t take away from the mystique.

I also noticed that in the Pixar file “The Incredibles” another of these futuristic devices made its own appearance. It is funny to reflect on watching the movie and the device seemed so futuristic in 2004 at the time but now I look at it and say “hey, that’s an iPad”.

It is amazing how far technology has caught up to fiction. We can only hope that the visionaries of the future keep pushing our boundaries forward and give us inspiration for the next generation of life altering devices.

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