I remember staring out the car window at farms, fields, mountains, and oceans thinking about technology to make car trips a bit more exciting. It was a dream of mine when I was twelve to have a device that would somehow allow me to listen to any of my music at any time, and anyplace. In this vision it was more like a wireless headset that could access my CD player at home, even if home was a thousand miles away.

As a sophomore in High School I recall reading Fahrenheit 451 and how Guy Montag’s wife had a radio that fit into her ear, and she always seemed to watch a television that filled an entire wall. When I read it, I was pretty excited for the day when those devices would be available.

Today I sit at work with a small ear-bug that’s linked to an iPod, with almost every song I own stored on it and a battery life of a standard eight-hour day. The music plays at a level to keep me going but also allows me to hear the phone ring or take it out when someone starts talking to me.

Although I don’t have one yet, televisions and screens that fill entire walls a fairly common, and flat. If you combine one of these projection screens with a video-conference system you can exactly reproduce a scene from old sci-fi.

Though we’re missing the expected flying car and bubble-city, we have accomplished a few things that were once a little boy’s dream. We’re headed for a time when everything is wireless and can work no matter where you are in the world, a time when technology is faster, smaller, and smarter. Already the lines between devices are blurring and things are merging into single products. Computers and becoming TVs and phones are becoming cameras and music players. Is there really a need for me to control my refridgerator from afar?

Video Games are already extremely realistic and almost have no where to go but into a third dimension. When my little boy is grown up, I wonder how much technology will have advanced? Will we have electronic news papers that update instantly with feeds from news sources? Will books be downloadable into an electronic paper binding, meaning you have an infinite amount of books but only one “device” to carry?

Will my room adjust lighting, temperature, and other settings when I ask it? I think that Star Trek had everything right when it dealt with the future. We seem to already have communicators, now all we need are replicators, transporters, holodecks, and a computer we can easily talk to. I’m excited to see what we come up with.