The return to 'normal' requires acceptance of emerging tech

Source: Smart Cities Dive Published: May 13, 2020

When the movie "Minority Report" debuted to a stunned audience in 2002, it depicted never-before-conceptualized technologies, such as billboards that were personalized to whomever walked by them.

Moviegoers were equally mesmerized and horrified by the idea of 'Big Brother' watching over them. The concept of biometric ads was similar to flying cars in the realm of science fiction: great theater, but not likely in the real world.

Five years later, the first iPhone hit the market, followed by the App Store in 2008. These iPhones and other smart phones were built with more than 100,000 times the processing power, a million times the memory and more than seven million times more storage than the Apollo 11 computers that took humanity to the moon in 1969.

The unimaginable was now reality: smart computers in the hands of regular, everyday people.