There’s a helicopter on Mars.
It’s still pretty amazing to be able to type those words. It gets even more amazing when you consider that 118 years ago, the Wright Brothers were trying to prove that airplanes were a possibility, much less helicopters on another planet.
I posted something about that progression in technology on Facebook, and a friend of mine posed a question I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: Will the next 118 years see such amazing inventions, or will we just improve on what we currently have?
It’s a really fun question to consider, and it applies to just about every aspect of our lives. Even in my lifetime, we’ve gone from home computers being a luxury to basically everyone carrying one in their pocket. The pace of change has been blistering, and it does raise the question of whether there’s really anything new to invent, or if we can only improve on what we have.