Last night, over dinner, I was part of a conversation about virtual and augmented reality, two technologies that aren’t here yet, but are inevitable and will change a lot about our world. We marveled at the possibilities and how wonderful it might be to live in a world with these things.
Today, in Budapest, we woke up and had tea at a great local place with the strange name, 1000Tea. They do tea right– they give you a good amount of high quality leaves, water of the right temperature, and all the accoutrement necessary for Chinese tea ceremony.
After tea we strolled around a bit and made our way to Kiraly Baths, a Turkish bathhouse that’s been in operation for around five hundred years and hasn’t been restored in decades. We soaked for an hour or two, alternating between hot, very hot, and cool pools of water.
As I sat in the pool, staring at the light filtering through the five-hundred-year-old glass blocks in the ceiling, I thought about how great it was to be able to soak in natural geothermically-heated water from the depths of the earth. I also thought about how incredible it was that I could drink tea anywhere in the world that was expertly grown and processed in China.
How do those sorts of inventions stack up to augmented reality? What about the plane that brought me to Budapest, or the $1 trains that take me around the city through underground tunnels?
It’s so easy to get excited about the future, and well justified, too. But there’s a lot in the past and the present to be excited about, as well. It’s sitting there around us, all of it amazing, and we ignore its wonder because it’s within reach.
This world is an amazing place, and will only continue to become more amazing. But rather than waiting for all that stuff, let’s appreciate what we have now, and what we’ve had for a long time.
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Photo is the ceiling of the opera house in Budapest.
Right now I’m in Halifax, working on the island. I just did half of my Amtrak residency to get here, and will be doing it again on the way back. Expect a mega-post on it!
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