Dude, Where's My Jet Pack?

45 years ago this evening I watched the Apollo 11 moon landing with my parents and younger brother. I remember it clearly although my brother, two years younger, does not. (He will, on the other hand, describe in great detail games from the New York Mets season that year.)

In 1969 everyone focused on the amazing technology that had gotten US astronauts to the moon. What was next? A permanent lunar base? Travel to Mars? Vacations in space? And, of course, jet packs--the personal transportation devices that were a mainstay of science fiction movies, comic books and TV shows. We would rise above the crowded roads, the urban traffic and busy highways, and propel ourselves wherever we chose.

Somehow it never happened.

When I attended a talk on transportation at NYU's Rudin Center for Transportation in April, our name tags asked how we would get to work in the future. Being a late Baby Boomer, I suggested jet packs; but it was more nostalgia than forward thinking that inspired me. Probably other Boomers in the audience were disappointed that there was no talk about jet packs that evening. Instead there was much discussion of New York City's new bike sharing program and smartphone apps for navigating the city.

Ah, yes... smartphones. We didn't see that coming 45 years ago.

While we were awed by the giant rockets lifting off into space, we overlooked the small, primitive computers that made them go. Indeed, the computers were physically quite large by today's standards; it was still the era of mainframes that filled a cooled, dust-free room. To control spacecraft some computers needed to get smaller. They were being made to communicate across great distances. All of this was still in the early stages, not as cool as the big rockets and the funny-looking LEM that landed on the moon, then lifted off a couple of (Earth) days later.

1969 was only four years since Gordon Moore had hypothesized that computer processing power--measured by the number of circuits that could fit on a chip of a given size--would double every two years. That is, circuit density had only quadrupled since Moore drew a simple pencil graph.

Now 49 years have passed since Moore's Law was hypothesized. That's about 16.8 million times the density of circuits on a chip. (A bit more, actually, because for some years the rate of doubling was every 18 months.)

What that means is that for about $200 I bought a seven-inch tablet computer that has computing power that would have been unimaginable in 1969. I can connect to wi-fi hotspots all over the city, providing access to the Internet and all the information, communication tools, and funny cat videos anyone could need.

Instead of a jet pack that carries me around town, I have an extremely portable device that brings the world to me. And the answer to how we'll get to work in the future? Maybe we won't need to: technology will bring our work to us wherever we are, be it an office, a co-working space, a coffee shop, or our homes. Or maybe, someday, a vacation resort on the moon.

Karen E. Lund has spent most of her career providing administrative support to non-profit organizations. She tinkers with spreadsheets and other software, and blogs at CircleOfIgnorance.com.