The future is happening around us every day. Think about this: five years ago there was no iPhone, and the first Android phone just turned four years old a few months ago. Today smart phones can replace cameras, mobile broadcasting trucks, calendars, Game Boys, digital recorders and to some extent our home computer.
These devices have impacted how we talk to each other. From a device considerably smaller than  a paperback novel (another job this little device can do) we can send a letter, a short text, make a phone call or with the right device, talk to them face to face. This is the world we live in.
The most amazing thing about this world is that we take it for granted. We simply expect to have access to the data we want, when we want it.
Being the connected social networker that I am, I wanted to see if it was just me who felt this way, so I turned to Google+, a platform that is less than a year old but has fully integrated into my daily routine. In less than 10 minutes I had responses from a handful of people across the country. Just like that, they added to the list of things we take for granted: flight, the internet (this one is such a part of the landscape to me that I did not even think about it), Mp3s and Mp3 players.
Think about this: when the semester started we did not have Spotify in the United States or an easy way to share music via Facebook.
But all of this pales in comparison to what is coming. A company called Exo-desk is coming out with a touch screen desk that you can set your computer up on. Think about this: rather than having a desk piled with papers to sort through, you can have the notes you’re typing spread out digitally on your desk. Your Twitter, Facebook and email can pop up as well and it supports 10-point, multi-touch gestures. To put it another way it knows what each of your fingers is doing.
That is just the start of the near future; there are chips in development that will give our mobile devices the computing power of our PCs, color e-ink displays that only use power when they refresh and affordable 3D printing technology for our homes.
We live in the future and while all this technology we access every day is wonderful, it is not the answer to every problem. It is just another tool, another pathway to making problems and solving them. It is a new way for us to connect with each other or to distract ourselves from those around us.
Our phones, cameras and streaming data connections are not where our lives should be but are the tools that help us live. It is not the number of friends on our social networks that matters but the interactions that we have with them. A thousand requests to play the latest ‘ville game is not as meaningful as the single note saying “I was thinking of you today and that made me happy.”
We live in the future and are surrounded every day by the wonder that it brings. We need to be able to recognize and find amazement about things we as a species have accomplished  and at the same time remember that compared to how awesome and cool those accomplishments are, it is the people who live in the future with us who are really amazing.