Looking to the skies

It was an average work day in 1977 for Walter Alvarez.  He is an American geologist who was chiseling rock in Italy one very ordinary day, just trying to read the rock record of the Earth.  Scientists had noticed for years that fossils and bones appeared everywhere in the Cretaceous strata of the Earth, but the number of bones and fossils diminish by about 75% in the Tertiary layer above the Cretaceous and change in type as well.  How curious, Alvarez thought, so he had gone to these two geologic strata in Italy to investigate.

He did his usual chiseling and collecting and then sent off samples to the lab and awaited the results hoping there would be a clue to this apparent period of dying off on the Earth.  He didn't know that his average work day in 1977 was his lucky day.  It was the beginning of evidence that rewrote the world's history.  It challenged the crux of Darwinism because of the amount of time evolution has to have in order to produce multiple forms of life.  It challenged the geological theory of uniformitarianism because of the abrupt and fairly immediate effects that could be seen around the globe after a catastrophic event.  It challenged religious ideas of creation because of the proof it offered of an event that predated written history, in fact all of human history.

What he discovered on this very ordinary day was something quite extraordinary, a layer of iridium in quantities that can only come from space and the layer in the Earth was evenly distributed, meaning that something had happened at this place in Italy and everywhere else on Earth, not merely in one place.  Now, nearly all scientists believe or give credence to the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs and 75% of all the species of life on the Earth.  Over the last 37 years, the meteor crater has been located that verifies the event and corollary theories of the impact's aftermath have shown more exactly why there is a change in the fossil record.

It was just a normal reporting day for Marco Cava as he combed through technology stories to bring to USA Today.  He was merely reporting on the recent coding conference.  But, this day he decided to report on a Google device that would really change the whole way information is brought to the average person.  It was premiered as the Oculus Rift.  And what a change to the world it promises to deliver.

Everyone has heard of and experimented with virtual technology.  Sometimes the term virtual reality is used, but mostly only the word virtual is used, rightly so.  Virtual reality is something that actually happens in real time, and people interact with the transmission because it is in 3D and people see each other as if they were in the same physical location.  Holograms are the nearest description we have to virtual reality.  The Oculus Rift will change all of that.  Subsequent generations of this invention will allow things to happen from anywhere in 3D reality.

In a parallel story, Edward Baig reports from the same tech conference that GoPro will have on the market a type of camera that will take spherical pictures.  It can also be mounted on the growing market of drones that is projected to be as commonplace as computers in the next 10 years.

Now, I'm thinking that if spherical pictures meet Oculus Rift, then...  our world will be VERY different, to say the least.  2D screens will suddenly be 3D globes and resemble the 3D spherical planet we live on already.

This is the technology side of things.  The education that exists today will be part of the 75% of life forms that will not survive this technological impact.  There's a meteor coming that will change our lifestyle radically, as radically as the K-T boundary.  Education will survive, but not anywhere close to its current form.  Banking and currency will survive, just not as we know it today.  Business will survive, but it will be completely changed in how it employs people.

Change usually occurs slowly and over time.  Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs went to sleep one night, along with other species, thinking that they would exist another million years into the future.  Little did they know the next day was their personal last and the last for their entire species.  Tonight is an average night for us as well, but those who don't follow the tech world will find themselves in the same position that many 80-year-olds are in today.  They don't know how to work a smart phone; they don't use email or other electronic message delivery systems; they don't trust Facebook because the government uses it to spy on people; they have no clue how to order from Ebay or Amazon (so they still go shopping, believe it or not); and they think the idea of a virtual world is ludicrous because it is detrimental to "real communication."  Their fossils will not be a part of the geologic record of any year past 2030.

We ourselves could also wake up tomorrow (figuratively speaking, but not by much) and wonder what the big booming noise is, what the fires everywhere on the Earth are from, why the Earth is shaking, and what the reason for the tsunamis is as we drown in the crash of their waves, burn alive, or are blown to smitherines by the tremendous force of shock waves. 

But if we look to the skies to see what is coming...