Yesterday, I bought my first robot.<\/p>\n
Also yesterday, my Link (cellphone to you) upgraded itself to Android 4.4.2, though I had to manually invoke the “Android RunTime” upgrade<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today I read about Google buying\u00a0Boston Dynamics, a company that makes a robot<\/a> that runs like a cheetah faster<\/a> than a man, and while I couldn’t quite see the lounge chair on my porch with the satellite view in Google Maps, I can see the front door of a friend’s house<\/a>. And my Link can guide me from my remote Oregon hilltop to a deli in San Francisco if I ask it to.<\/p>\n At one time, getting lost was<\/em>\u00a0the adventure.<\/p>\n They are are floating Google cameras down the Grand Canyon<\/a>, and two thousand cars \u00a0photograph the streets of Hyderabad<\/a>, India every day. When I was in India the first time, it was on the other side of the world. Now I can drive the streets from my easy chair.<\/p>\n Everything. Is. Being. Digitized.<\/p>\n This column started to be about how we might expect to see a flood, with frozen ground covered by snow, if warm, wet Pacific storms head our way for Christmas as they often do. But something happened on the way to the laptop. A friend recalled the flood of 1964, which we both remembered, then we both realized at about the same time that was a half century ago.<\/p>\n I learned to read from Asimov, Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Delaney and the others. They took me to worlds where anything that could be imagined<\/a> could be true, a place better than where I lived. I wrote a paper in sixth grade that described such a place.<\/p>\n I live there, now. Its job done,\u00a0my vacuum cleaner just put itself away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, I bought my first robot.<\/p>\n Also yesterday, my Link (cellphone to you) upgraded itself to Android 4.4.2, though I had to manually invoke the “Android RunTime” upgrade<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today I read about Google buying\u00a0Boston Dynamics, a company that makes a robot<\/a> that runs like a cheetah faster<\/a> than a man, and while I couldn’t quite see the lounge chair on my porch with the satellite view in Google Maps, I can see the front door of a friend’s house<\/a>. And my Link can guide me from my remote Oregon hilltop to a deli in San Francisco \u2026 Read more\u2026
![Hyderabad<\/a>, India every day. When I was in India the first time, it was on the other side of the world. Now I can drive the streets from my easy chair.<\/p>\nEverything. Is. Being. Digitized.<\/p>\nThis column started to be about how we might expect to see a flood, with frozen ground covered by snow, if warm, wet Pacific storms head our way for Christmas as they often do. But something happened on the way to the laptop. A friend recalled the flood of 1964, which we both remembered, then we both realized at about the same time that was a half century ago.<\/p>\nI learned to read from Asimov, Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Delaney and the others. They took me to worlds where anything that could be imagined<\/a> could be true, a place better than where I lived. I wrote a paper in sixth grade that described such a place.<\/p>\nI live there, now. Its job done,\u00a0my vacuum cleaner just put itself away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday, I bought my first robot.<\/p>\nAlso yesterday, my Link (cellphone to you) upgraded itself to Android 4.4.2, though I had to manually invoke the “Android RunTime” upgrade<\/a>.<\/p>\nToday I read about Google buying\u00a0Boston Dynamics, a company that makes a robot<\/a> that runs like a cheetah faster<\/a> than a man, and while I couldn’t quite see the lounge chair on my porch with the satellite view in Google Maps, I can see the front door of a friend’s house<\/a>. And my Link can guide me from my remote Oregon hilltop to a deli in San Francisco \u2026 Read more\u2026 → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[145,234,232,231,233],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-out-my-window","category-outer-limits","tag-cell-phones","tag-future","tag-google","tag-robots","tag-roomba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mcOb-bZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/wikitravel.org\/upload\/shared\/\/3\/35\/Hyderabad_from_Char_Minar.jpg\"){kind=link}