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Cartoons become reality in today’s future

Tuesday January 22 2019
fly

An electric vehicle Aptera. The vehicle is an egg-shaped two-seater often likened to a space-age car from the futuristic 1960s cartoon "The Jetsons." PHOTO | REUTERS

By WALE AKINYEMI

In 1962, The Jetsons cartoon series was introduced and with it the idea of talking alarm clocks, flat screen televisions, smart watches, video conferencing, drones, flying cars and space tourism.

Today, most of the things that were depicted as crazy concepts for an imaginary future are the reality of our times.

Uber for example is working on a flying car taxi that could be made available within the next three years in some parts of the world.

The point here is that it seems that we are living in the animated prediction of Hanna-Barbera’s “Future.” It may never be fully able to measure the impact of their imagination on the world we live in today.

What exactly is the future? In Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One, described the future as a time when the world looks different from today.

He goes on to say that if nothing about our environment and the world changes for the next 100 years, well then the future is over 100 years away.

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When The Jetsons was released, colour televisions were not even common and every television in the world had a “back.”

Digital watches weren’t released until the 70s, innovation where cars were concerned was still relatively progressive, video conferencing was a dream everyone looked forward to, and the Internet wasn’t even a thing!

In essence, the world where the creators of the show lived in, shared no resemblance to their experience of the world.

However, today we are living in the same world the creators imagined. Hanna-Barbera created a template for the future we are all using today.

Why is this important? Because we are living in a time that bears no resemblance to our past.

We are living in a world where people who play video games can easily earn $500,000 dollars monthly for being well at these games they play.

We are living in a world up, where over 360 million people gather to watch other people play video games.

We are living in a world where you can now be signed by an eSport team if you play games exceptionally.

We are living in a world where the Olympics is creating an eSports forum so in the very near future – Olympians can also include gamers. Gamers are now the athletes of the future.

We are living in a world where entertainment has changed rapidly. We are living in a word we no longer have to physically buy music.

All we need to do is pay a monthly subscription to stream music and get access to over 30 million songs on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

We are living in a world where cable subscriptions are dying because with about $10 a month, you can use platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO to watch all movies and shows in the world.

We are living in a world where transportation is changing daily. Electric cars are taking the front stage through companies like Tesla. Petrol and diesel cars are counting their days.

Companies like Apple and Google have teams trying to perfect driverless cars and Uber is developing flying cars.

We live in a world where innovators like Elon Musk have proposed and conceptualised entirely new forms of transportation like the Hyperloop, which should be in use within the next few years.

We live in a world where companies like SpaceX have finally been able to create reusable rockets and are now in the process of working towards humans landing on Mars.

If your mind doesn’t catch up to the realities of the present you will miss out on the opportunities of the future. Don’t sit down and go through time – grab it.

Wale Akinyemi is the chief transformation officer at PowerTalks. Twitter: @waleakinyemi

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