June 20, 2013

Everyday Magic

The Loop > Magazine > Issue 4

By Brad McCarty

We live in a time where we can access the sum total of the world’s knowledge from a device that we carry in our pockets.

If you were to go back in time, and try to explain to people what the world is like in 2013, our lives might sound a bit like magic. In reality, we’re living in a future that is far more advanced than just about anything that we might have dreamed previously, and yet we technologically-inclined folks never really seem impressed.

Comedian Louis CK perhaps says it best — “Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.”

A couple of months ago, I was watching Dave McClure from 500 Startups talk to a crowd in Omaha, Nebraska. The basis of his talk was that technology has reached the point where we’re simply iterating on already-great ideas instead of truly innovating and coming up with something new. While I agree somewhat with his sentiment, I can’t help but think that we as a society have become far too jaded and demanding with our definition of the word “innovation.”

As I sit here writing this, I’m creating messages on a screen using pixels and data. I’m doing this work on a machine that weighs less than the telephone which used to sit on my kitchen wall as a kid. I’m using a keyboard that can switch between three different devices, so I have full control of a MacBook Air, a Windows-based laptop and my iPad—which in and of itself is a device that is so utterly amazing that I find it almost impossible to put into words.

Yet, we still want more. Smaller, faster, lighter, thinner, better batteries. We want it all. We’re never satisfied.

And that’s a very good thing.

Read the rest of this article by subscribing to The Loop magazine on the App Store from your iPhone or iPad.