Hydroponics Garden

I got sidetracked on YouTube and found myself curious about hydroponics. Well, I must admit that it wasn't just one sidetracking event.... Eventually, I found that Aerogarden had a great deal on one of their Hydroponics Garden. So I ordered one (Classic 7) with a leaf lettuce kit.

Twenty-four days after planting we had our first harvest with 4 salads with just the outer leaves. Fresh, crisp, sweet, and delicious! The plants remained in the Aerogarden, pruned and ready to keep producing! Another batch of salad should be ready in 5-7 days.

Benefits of hydroponics: Plants grow up to 5 times faster than in soil. Grow indoors. Grow year-round. No sun. No yard. No soil. No weeding. No snails, worms, bugs, gophers, rabbits, or animal contamination (no recall for E. coli). It's the opposite of labor intensive. Perfect for an apartment. Set it up and forget it.

Disadvantages: When this post publishes I'll be in the middle of a 10 day vacation. What will it look like when I return home? Will it have taken over the kitchen? Could be addicting. What happens when I have the whole house full of these? Banks of red grow lights might make the neighbors think I am growing something other than salad.

A heaping plate of leaf lettuce trimmings. Yum!

The smaller Aerogarden model we chose had space for 7 plants and about 3 gallons of water. It comes with an airstone to keep the water aeriated, like a small aquarium. It comes with an array of LEDs--red for leaves, blue for flowers, white for human eyes to see. The arm adjusts up and down and should be kept about 1 inch above the leaves for maximum light intensity and leaf growth.

Aerogarden on our kitchen counter showing the LED array

The Salad Mix Seed Pod Kit contains 7 seed pods with peat moss. They fit in the holes in the top of the Aerogarden with just the bottom of the peat moss reaching into the water. Eventually, the plants grow hundreds of long white root threads down into the water, and many into the moist air between the cover and the water surface. Yes, some roots gather oxygen, rather than water.

DAY 1: All planted. Seeds should sprout in 3-11 days.

A bottle of liquid fertilizer provides the primary three plant nutrients--nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. It also contains lesser amounts of the secondary nutrients--calcium and magnesium. Since the lettuce is designed only to last a few weeks/months and be thrown out when it goes to seed, a dozen lesser trace nutrients aren't necessary for long-term plant health. Do-it-yourselfers make their own fertilizers, as it is very inexpensive to make gallons of fertilizer at home, but relatively expensive to ship pre-made liquid fertilizers, which are 99% water. The salad kit comes with a 3 ounce bottle of fertilizer. On set-up, and every two weeks thereafter, you add two small capfuls of fertilizer. Otherwise, just top off the water when needed (there is also a low-water indicator).

DAY 14: One set of seeds was a bit slower than the rest.

I thought the plants grew a bit slowly at first. All seed pods have 5 or more seeds and are guaranteed to sprout. Oh, they did sprout quickly, but looked a bit spindly at first. "Don't be afraid to thin," wasn't very helpful advice. I ended up thinning out all but the healthiest one plant in each pod. I don't know if that was correct or not. The "late bloomer" front and center? I didn't thin that one at all. After adding fertilizer on Day 14, the plants really grew!

DAY 24: Ready for the first harvest!

At Day 24 the very first leaves were 5-7 inches long and either hanging over the edge and not receiving much light, or were blocking light from leaves below. So it was time to prune. That provided our first salad meals as in the top photo.

This plant should continue to grow and produce for  a couple of months. As long as it doesn't bolt--growing a flower stalk--the leaves should remain sweet and keep growing. I'm a bit worried, as I keep house temperatures between 74-77F; lettuce really prefers temperatures under 72F. Higher temperatures may cause the plant to bolt sooner.

Other kits include spices, flowers, and miniature cherry tomatoes. I don't like tomatoes raw--and they take a long time to fruit and ripen. Marlene is sensitive to flower pollen. What is lemongrass or basil, and what would you do with several pounds of it? So, lettuce was an easy choice for our first attempt.

I've noted a few hydroponics stores in the area where I could choose other seeds and buy fertilizer. I could see growing a salsa garden mix--peppers, onions, cilantro, and maybe ONE cherry tomato. Or plant a lettuce pod every 2 weeks to keep fresh lettuce ready for harvest continuously.

Anyway, I don't intend to take this any further than this one small unit. But it's a fun little experiment and certainly an interesting conversational topic!

A strange discussion: Part two

[Part one is here]

Have you ever said, "I wish I had a clone I could send to work while I stayed home with the family?" That's exactly what happened to the character played by Michael Keaton in the 1996 movie comedy Multiplicity. Well, not "exactly" what happened, as Mr. Keaton's character ended up making many copies of himself, and not "exact" copies, leading to the hilarious situations depicted.

If a robot could be trained to do my job, it would easily replace me 5 times over, even if it worked at my slow pace. It would work 24 hours a day, rather than 8 of a full-time job (I am actually only employed for less than 6 hours a day). In addition, I have weekends off, have a few holiday and vacation and sick days and mandated break periods. Oh, and lunch. An automaton would hit the ground running on Monday morning, wouldn't daydream and make weekend plans on Friday, gossip around the water cooler, take bathroom breaks, surf the web and answer personal emails, make doctor and car repair appointments, sulk about an argument with the boss or spouse, worry about the health of the children, or any of the hundreds of distractions that people go through at work every day. Did I say 5 times? If a robot could do my job, it could replace 10 of me!

Do you see that if my job is automated, a single robot doesn't replace just me, but many of me? Or put another way, a single robot could produce 10 times the output (goods, services, and profit) that I do. The total gross national product of today could be supplied by highly-efficient and profitable robots with only 10% of the equivalent human workforce of today.

In my previous article I recounted that my wife and I discussed changes to society by self-driving cars and who that might put out of work. Some have posited that if robots take over just 20% of all jobs the increase in goods produced would create a "post-scarcity economy." That is, there would no longer be a supply-and-demand economy created by a scarcity of some material (food, housing) for which we would work and pay money. The supply of life's necessities would be available to all at a cost so low that most people would not have to work. An "infinite" supply, like air and sunshine. But in order to keep businesses profitable and producing, the government would provide the non-working majority a basic living income so that they could still be productive consumers. This is called Universal Basic Income.

Of course, some people could work, if they had the temperament to hold down a job, and the aptitude to deserve government paid training for the few positions necessary.

Does this sound crazy enough for you? It could never happen, right? Well, it is already happening with experiments in universal basic income now underway in Finland, Kenya, and Oakland, California. There are plans in Canada to start an experiment there. A referendum to implement this nationwide in Switzerland was just rejected by voters, this time.

A cultural change to society

Obviously, anything like universal basic income would significantly alter our culture. Many people define themselves by their job. And many people put many more than 40 hours per week into it. What would you do if you didn't need to work for money?

I, for one, have no desire to be a "gentleman of leisure" such as existed in the Victorian era England. Pride and Prejudice, anyone? No thank you. I would still work, but do something I enjoyed more. Volunteer work, arts and crafts, travel. There are several jobs now I'd like to do, but don't pay enough to live, and are mostly performed by volunteer retired persons: campground host, volunteers at nature centers, natural history interpreters, tour guides. I could be a tinkerer and inventor. I'd learn more, teach more. This inspirational quote takes on more meaning: "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

My Grandfather did, indeed live through a great period of change during the 20th century. Is it possible there's even a bigger technological and cultural change ahead?

---

Who says?

Information in this post is primarily from these sources:

"Elon Musk: Automation will force universal basic income," 5/29/2017 by Daniel Starkey, Geek.com.
This article introduces the "post-scarcity economy" whereby "in the not-too-distant future, money won't matter and all of our economies will totally collapse." Self-driving cars will take away 20% of all labor jobs from the transportation industry alone.

"More robots, fewer jobs," 5/8/2017 Mira Rojanasakul and Peter Coy, Bloomberg.com. Analyzes the impact of robots and automation on jobs, based on "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets," March 2017 a white paper by Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restropo of Boston University, National Bureau of Economic Research. Research confirms that robots and automation do replace workers, and increase production. Additionally, wages fall for workers who remain employed. Industries that don't automate lose jobs anyway due to higher costs, and customers go to lower-priced--and often automated--competitors.

"When Robots Take All the Work, What'll Be Left for Us to Do?" 8/8/2014 by Marcus Wohlsen, Wired.com. Although this article is a bit older than the current glut of Artificial Intelligence and self-driving car infatuation, it argues that humans may still be employed where empathy, creativity, judgement, and critical thinking are needed. Health care, education, and care of children and the elderly are likely to remain in human hands. More about post-scarcity here, where robots efficiently and profitably produce far more than can be consumed. Jobs are optional and money has no meaning, as in the Star Trek universe. A change to society and what it means to be human.

A strange discussion: Part one

Introduction

My grandfather used to say that he lived through the greatest technological changes in human history. He had a point. As a child he observed coal delivery by horse and wagon to each home. By the time he was an older man the atom had been split with horrifying results, man had walked on the moon, and personal computers were infiltrating homes.

Technological changes have been two-headed. One can almost see the race between communication and transportation during my grandfather's life: trains versus telephones, automobile versus radio, aircraft versus television, rockets versus computers. Each technology changed the world. One by physically moving us faster and allowing us to be there more quickly, the other by allowing us to talk and see each other instantaneously. Walking versus talking.

The Internet. Smartphones. These latest technologies are communications-based. What is the corresponding transportation technology? Assuming that teleportation is a ways off yet, the next step is obvious, the merging of communication and transportation technologies. Machines that walk and talk. Self-driving cars and robots that replace our jobs are just the start of a technological change that will fundamentally change how we view ourselves--as individuals and as a culture. Cultural changes have always been more difficult for society than technological changes.

A strange discussion

A couple of weeks ago Marlene and I had a 20-minute discussion on societal impacts of emerging technology. That discussion led to this two-part post. The fact we had such an engaging discussion on this topic is noteworthy in itself. Now I'd discuss this topic for hours on end had I an associate interested in such (which partially explains why I don't get invited to parties much), but it isn't a topic that Marlene would normally choose. That we were discussing technology change as a family says something about the interesting times in which we live. In a way, it reminded me of discussions I remember as a child, when my parents would get together with aunts and uncles and the discussion would naturally turn to the impending moon landings. What would they find? What does it mean?

In fact, Marlene and I discussed only one question: "If cars become mostly self-driving, how does that affect society?"

Our discussion was by no means thorough, but we hit on many concerns and possible outcomes popular in the media. These included vehicle sharing rather than ownership, fewer parking lots, homes without garages or driveways, fewer automobile accident deaths (1 million deaths per year worldwide now, 50% involving alcohol, according to some factoid I acquired without remembering the attribution), insurance rates skyrocketing for those sticking with human-driven vehicles, perhaps renting a human-driven car for vacation wilderness destinations ("dirt road travel"). Finally the discussion turned to loss of jobs in the transportation industry, first long haul truckers and taxi drivers.

A continuation

Our conversation on this topic soon ended. But that didn't mean my brain wasn't still occupied with it. It had turned to job loss by automation. In fact, I see automation easily taking over cashiers and even fast-food establishments. Can you imagine? What would it be like to enter such an establishment without the undertone of hostility created by hormonal youths trying to function in their first job, all under the direction of a harried assistant manager trying to upsell to everyone. You want fries with that? (Sorry, cultural reference from 1992 that no one but me remembers.)

I was thinking that automation would slowly take over jobs, one after another--perhaps entry level first. But then an article appeared that made it seem possible that there was a tipping point, much earlier than I imagined, when work as we know it might change.

My grandfather may indeed have lived through an unprecedented series of technological changes. But there may be something on the horizon that will more profoundly impact society.

Continue to Part Two...

Google Calendar Goals: Wonderful but flawed

About a year ago Google Calendar added "Goals" in addition to Appointments and Reminders.

Appointments are firm time commitments, like my daily work schedule. Reminders are a "to-do" list that automatically goes to the top of the next day's schedule if not marked as completed.

Goals are a bit in-between.

The example Google uses is to set a goal of exercising twice a week. It doesn't matter so much when, as long as you complete your goal some time during the week. If you don't do your goal this week, they aren't carried forward. Rather the goals repeat each week (or other time period you select). Goals appear automatically in your calendar in empty time slots in your calendar.

Goals are "soft" appointments. Thus, if you decide to watch TV instead of your goal of study at 7:00 pm Tuesday, or go out to eat instead of completing your goal of buying the week's groceries at 5:30 pm Sunday, Goals reschedules your goals for you on your Google Calendar at another specific open time in your Calendar. A goal can be set for once a month or 3 times per week, or repeat in any manner you wish. Wonderful! It's supposed to learn your schedule. Eventually, it will schedule your goals when you most frequently do them. Except it doesn't. At least, not often enough to keep me from frequently resetting the dates and times. It reschedules too late in the week and at the wrong hours of the day.

I spend too much time manually adjusting the time settings for a feature that is supposed to auto-reset.

Google Calendar Goals developers evidently don't think you have a life between 10 PM and 8 AM. Why else would they make you manually set goals for those times and not automatically reschedule during those times? They've obviously never heard of graveyard or swing shift. This is my number one complaint about Goals. Let me list them...

1) You can set goals specifically for "morning," afternoon," or "evening." But Goals won't auto-set (or reschedule) between 10 PM and 8 AM. If you want to have a goal scheduled between, say, 6 and 8 in the morning, you must say "any time" and not turn off afternoon and evening settings, or it will not set your goal at all! Then you must go in and manually change the times and hope it will remember if you actually do the goal at that time.

2) What happens when I finish a goal before it was scheduled? Or what happens if I do a goal twice in a week and I only have it scheduled for once a week? I'd like to keep track of what I actually do in some situations. In the first situation I can manually move the scheduled goal to the earlier time and then mark it as done. But there isn't a way to mark a goal down more times than it was scheduled.

3a) I want to study for two weekly classes held on different days. I want to set a goal to study as many days before each class as possible. If I delay studying for the first class, I also want to put off the second. I don't want to study for the second class before I've studied for the first class. Which brings me to...

3b) If I put off a goal, I want the option for it to reschedule later in the same day, or the next available slot the next day, not reschedule it late in the week after the classes are over.

4. Just because I reschedule a Goal later once, doesn't mean that I want to use this new time as the preferred time for the goal in later weeks. I'd rather accomplish all my goals early in the week, if I can. That way, even if I delay a goal for later, I know I will get my goals accomplished for the week. If the weekly goal is set for the last day or two of the week, it might not get done at all that week.

Complain. Complain. Complain. And yet here I am still using Goals after 9 weeks. This is because, despite the quirks, I am accomplishing far more each week than I was without this nifty feature in the Google Calendar app. Before I heard about Goals, I didn't use the Calendar app at all.

And I'm still hoping that Goals will finally learn my true schedule, or that an update will allow me a bit more control. I'm sure my complaints are due to my over-scheduling. I've got maybe 20 goals a week I'm trying to have the app balance. Study periods, nature hike, art projects, shopping, household chores.

Writing this blog post was NOT one of my goals. So, while writing this I put off for later two other goals. I may end up canceling them completely for this week, knowing that these are repeating goals each week. But that will be a choice, whereas in the past I didn't accomplish all I hoped due to poor planning, distractions, or sloth.

Amazing robot does NOT wash your dishes!

Wired Magazine online (www.wired.com) alerted me to Boston Dynamics' new robot, Handle. It is a biped on wheels that spins and jumps, squats, and avoids obstacles, racing even while carrying 100 pounds!


When I show her this amazing robot video, Marlene asks me: "What does it do? Will it do my dishes?"

No, that's not a robot. That's a maid, or a husband... sometimes. (Notice I didn't say "wife," for obvious reasons.)

A robot is simply a programmable machine like your heater/AC thermostat, washing machine, and your current dishwasher....

Actually, the correct term for a robot that looks and acts human is an android. Since any android that could really pass as human would have an incredible programmed intelligence, they would be far too valuable to work as a dishwasher. Sorry. Overpopulated humanity, begging for jobs to feed their growing families, are stuck with the cheap menial labor, slaves to the smarter robots. Or maybe not. It is possible that advances in computer and mechanical technology could make robots inexpensive enough that they could be cost-effective as your housekeeper. But then, if mechanicals are smart enough to do our jobs, what are we biologics smart enough to do for employment? Queue another bad Sci-Fi movie.

Handle, the robot in the video, is brainless in the sense of performing a job (and likely blind, too). However, Handle, the machine, is beautifully programmed to stand on two legs and move rapidly and elegantly without falling down--in places where only humans can go now. That's what it does. That alone is unique and impressive. But it's only a start.

If bipedal robots like Handle can be made cheaply, then eventually "smarts" can be added. To be our servants, they'd need vision and obstacle recognition (more complex, even, than the self-driving cars now cruising our streets). They'd have to respond to voice control, but not just anyone's. You'd want them to understand to obey police or other authority, delay their goal in an emergency, and interact with merchants as they do your shopping. But you wouldn't want them to respond obediently to hooligans or thieves they encounter.

But even without those "smarts," a small bipedal robot that can stand on two legs and maneuver your home and neighborhood could find use as a children's toy (a little baby T-Rex toy that follows you around or is walked on a leash?). With only marginal improvements Handle-like robots could be roving parking lot security cameras. Or be controlled remotely to enter dangerous situations. And, yes, someday, maybe, it could be programmed to wash your dishes and do your shopping.

Far-fetched? Maybe. But don't tell that to the Virginia State Legislature. They just approved a law allowing said robots to deliver your groceries using public sidewalks.

Elon Musk is about to change our future

What do PayPal, Space-X, Tesla Motors, Solar City, Hyperloop, and OpenAI have in common? Elon Musk. Mr. Musk's business exploits have been compared to the Marvel Comics' character Tony Stark--the rich genius inventor who becomes IronMan.

There are several societal-transforming technologies that this visionary business magnate is developing right now that seem to be on the verge of a revolutionary break-through. But first, let me try to set up a bit of his history for you from Musk's Wikipedia page.

Musk was cofounder of PayPal, a world-wide online payment system. The success, and 2002 sale to eBay, of PayPal allowed Musk to create businesses out of his other interests.

One of Musk's early ventures was to try to buy refurbished Russian ICBM's as rockets for his vision of establishing a privately-owned space exploration company. The Russian deal didn't work out--they wanted too much money, among other things. He decided to build his own rockets--and make them reusable--for only 3% of the current price of rockets being built. After all, it wasn't like this was rocket science or anything. Oh, wait.

So SpaceX was born in 2002 and today we have Elon Musk's dream already delivering goods to the International Space Station, while the booster stage of the rockets land themselves back on the launchpad to fly again. Musk's near-term dream? To colonize Mars, with first manned flights of settlers starting in 2024. That's only 7 years from now, you know.

In 2004 Musk started funding Tesla Motors, an electric car company. In 2008 Musk became the CEO and product architect. Today's Tesla Model-S luxury cars (about $70,000 and up) are fast, quick (0-60 mph in 2.8 seconds for the fastest models), and go about 250 miles between charges. In October, Tesla announced that all cars it manufactures from here forward are being produced with the hardware to be self-driving.

Musk conceived and funded SolarCity in 2006 to slow global warming. It is now the second largest supplier of solar power systems in the US. In August of 2016 Tesla Motors acquired SolarCity.

In 2013 Musk revealed a design concept called Hyperloop. A transportation tube much like the pneumatic tubes at your drive-through bank. A tube between San Francisco and Los Angeles would be the least expensive form of transportation between those cities. It is still in the experimental stage.

Another of Musk's more recent ventures is creating OpenAI, a not-for-profit, artificial intelligence research company. The stated goal is to make AI available to everyone, and not have super-intelligent systems controlled solely by governments or large corporations.

Space exploration, self-driving vehicles, solar energy, intelligent machines--these have been interests of mine off-and-on since childhood. Thus, the technologies that Elon Musk is working on fascinate me. Personal computers (1977 Radio Shack TRS-80), the Internet (1991 World Wide Web open to public), and ubiquitous little phone-computer-cameras (2007 Apple iPhone) tying the world together brought revolutionary technological changes to society in the past 40 years. I believe Elon Musk has society on the cusp of another such transformation--or even several.

I'm pretty sure that colonizing Mars is much harder than just the rockets--it's not even likely at this point that humans can survive cosmic radiation and lack of gravity for the two year trip to Mars. And the success of even small landers on Mars is way less than 50%. I think that robotic asteroid belt or moon mining is more likely as an agent for profitable space travel development than sending settlers to Mars. But NASA certainly isn't doing anything to advance space travel. And who knows what will come from thinking big? Most likely, something we haven't even thought of yet.

Self-driving electric cars would save lives, reduce traffic jams, reduce pollution, and reduce reliance on foreign oil. Such vehicles would probably reduce the total number of privately-owned cars. Self-driving cars that you call up when you need them would certainly change the automobile culture in the United States. Uber has a fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh undergoing trials in a downtown section now. Self-driving cars make the most sense in the near-term as taxis in dense urban areas.

And artificial intelligence? Visual perception, speech recognition, and human-like decision making processes performed by machines. Will intelligent machines take all our jobs or take over the world? Probably neither. But the possibility for changes to society brought by smart machines, self-driving cars, more Eco-friendly energy, cheaper access to space, and the colonizing of Mars are undeniable. Sure, it's the stuff of science fiction-- and likely our near future.

Google Now Enhanced Humans -- Have you seen them?

Google Now has existed for about 2 years. It advertises itself as an intelligent personal digital assistant. It competes against Apple Siri and Microsoft's Cortana. Google Now has apps for Android and iOS smart phones. It also works on the Google Chrome web browser.

At this point I am not interested in the main advertised functionality, which includes 35+ different specialized "cards" that can remind the user of appointments, flights, sports, weather, news, etc.

I've been using its functionality, without even realizing it, for information gathering. You may have been too. My Android phone comes with a Google search app bar with a little microphone icon and the words "OK Google,..." in the entry bar. This is the Google Voice Search to Google Now, but it is so much more than simply a voice interface to making a Google web search. Because, among other things, in addition to finding web sites about your search query, it first tries to provide you with a direct answer to your query--usually in the form of the introductory paragraph from Wikipedia or other "expert" site. In most cases, if you speak the query to it, it talks back; if you type, it provides text results only.

The verb "to Google" or "Googling" is thus changing meaning from searching for web pages containing information, to simply requesting the information directly. I believe this is not a subtle change.

I use the voice search feature of Google Now constantly for definitions (especially social media slang, medical, and synonyms), translations (Spanish to English), and entertainment trivia (movie cast). I looked at my Google history. I average over 10 different (not same question asked a different way) questions per day. Basically, Google Now answers my impromptu questions--things that come up during the day that I wonder about, but not so much that I'd remember (or care) to research it later. Immediacy.

Of course, we've had access to Google on our desktop for almost 20 years now. But only in the last year or so have we been "wearing" search technology. I mean, we have Google on our phones and we never go anywhere without our phones, do we? In a sense, we, as a species, are enhanced humans with instantaneous access to collective knowledge. How long before we have Google implants?

I wonder if this immediacy (whereby I mean the immediate access to collective knowledge) actually changes the learning mechanism for modern students (whereby I mean everyone). Does it make everyone "smarter"? Are today's school-age youths using the available technology in a different way from their peers in the past? Or is there always a gap in desire or ability between most students and those few who excel at learning?

I'm looking for any evidence of a growing group of self-learners that are setting themselves apart from their peers by using available "learning technologies" (or "knowledge technologies") such as that I see with Google Now. Have you seen any evidence of this? Perhaps such use of the latest "knowledge technologies" will only ever be used by a tiny fraction of students who, in bygone times, spent all their free time reading the big fat unabridged dictionaries and spent hours linking ("see also...") from subject to subject in the encyclopedias in the school library?

What do you think? Are we improving ourselves? Or do we only text and snap narcissistic photos of ourselves to share with strangers? Are we taking full advantage this amazing knowledge technology?

Star Trek technology that's even better today!

The 1966 TV series Star Trek depicted human space travel and technology in the 23rd century (the year 2265). Many of the futuristic items depicted as in use 200 years hence have already been invented in the past 50 years. In fact, some of what we have today is better than that imagined for 150 years from now!

Beam me up
No, we don't have any means of travel where we're disassembled, atom-by-atom, and then reassembled instantaneously somewhere else. Thank goodness! And, while faster-than-light travel may theoretically be possible according to some theories of the nature of the universe, it is equally likely that it is truly not possible. This, of course, ruins instantaneous space travel and communication across vast distances that is necessary for space opera fiction.

But nearly every other technological advance envisioned by Star Trek 50 years ago has already come true, at least in part.

Photo credit: treknews.net

Tricorder, communicator, universal translator, computer, all rolled into one
Your cell phone in 2015 with its myriad of apps has far more features than the Enterprise crew members had available in the year 2265. In fact, your cell phone is smaller, more sleek and useful than the communicator depicted in Star Trek in 1966. The first cellular telephone came out in 1973 and weighed 2-1/2 pounds!

In 1966 computers took up entire rooms. Star Trek depicted tablet computers with stylus! In 1977, Radio Shack released the TRS-80 personal computer. By 2010 tablet PC's were becoming ubiquitous with many more features than those envisioned in Star Trek.

A humorous scene in the 1986 movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home had the Enterprise crew go back in time to 1986. There Scotty tried trying to talk to an Apple Computer, "Hello, Computer."  Talking to our computer no longer seems silly. Today, we command the computer in our "telephone" by voice or keypad.

There is a Google voice search bar on Android phones (Siri for iOS). You speak to it, it answers back in voice and text. Try asking (speaking) these Google queries of your phone:

• How far away is Wolf 359?
• How do you say 'Where is the spaceship?' in Spanish?
• Who is Mr. Spock?
• Where am I?

Navigation computer on the Enterprise? Map apps on our phone or in our vehicles have spoken navigation. And they are getting better at accurately directing you. One of my early map navigation app's favorite phrase was: "In 600 feet make a U-turn." Not the same? There are free apps for your phone that allow you to point your phone at the night sky and the app will identify the stars, planets, and constellations for you.

This is true science fiction: not only predicting possible future technologies, but actually helping to define them. I'm not saying that we wouldn't have cell phones without Star Trek, but that 1966 TV show and subsequent shows and films helped people visualize what could be. In that way, I believe Star Trek "hurried" and refined these future devices, creating acceptance and even demand. Today's cell phones would likely be different without Star Trek.