Highschool technological - 2037

I graduated highschool in 1987. At our last gatherings in 1987, we talked about where our college or university studies would take us. "Where" could mean Ghent, Leuven, Brussels but it could also mean "medicine", "engineering", "economics", "informatics",.. We went places by bus and by train. Some of us had a girlfriend or boyfriend, all of us were heading off into a bigger world where we were sure to meet our future partners. Our parents had cars, we had none. The car of the year was the Opel Omega. One or two out of 25 had a computer. There was no internet. Cell phones were not at all parts of our lives. If you want to see what phones looked like, check out Phone History

In 1997, we did not meet (or maybe I was not invited). If we would have, we would have talked about our first experiences in our first jobs. Most of us would have found their partner, while studying or in the first years after. A lot of us would have got married quite recently. A few already had babies. We would have talked about those first jobs, about our young marriages and our sleepless nights with our young babies (I had none at the time). Most of us would have had a car, often a used one or one inherited from parents or sometimes from grandparents. The car of the year was the Renault Megance Scénic. I guess we all had or worked with computers. The launch of the Pentium II is the event of the year. The fastest Pentium II clocks at 450Mhz on one core. Computer networks started popping up at work. No-one would have had a network at home. Why would you? You had at best a PC and a printer directly attached to it. 1997 is the year when wifi is invented, but no-one has it. Some would have had a cell phone, but like networks, we would have associated that with "work". Some were "connected". Compuserve was coming at its end and the first WWW browsers were proliferating. Most had 28.8kbps modems (remember that sound?) and the gadgeteers amongst us had just invested in their first 56kbps modem. My boss at that time (he retired later as an exec in a world class technology company) was convinced that e-mail would be a fad and that faxes were there to stay. E-mail was for nerds. The maximum size of an attachment in 1997 was 200k. The average number of SMS's sent per GSM-owner was 0,6 per month! Sending an SMS from one provider to another was NOT possible. Google did NOT exist! You may enjoy this movie, made by Deloitte, Denying the future is so 1999

In 2007, another ten years later, we met in full for the first time. We were (almost) all there. We were all 38 years old. We all had met our partners and as far as I remember, everyone who had wanted kids, had kids. We talked about our jobs, we talked about our young families, many with 2 or 3 kids by now. Family life seemed perfect. Obviously, we all drove our own car (or many that of their employer) and we exchanged talks on the brands and types. The car of the year is the Ford S-Max. Electric and/or self-driving cars would not be a topic. Cell phones and SMS's were an integral part of our lives, not being reachable had become an illusion. Obviously, we all had one or more computers in our houses, often one for work (usually a portable one), and one for the family (usually a desktop). A regular new Intel processor clocks 4 x 2.6Ghz or about 10.000Mhz (to allow easy comparison with 1999). We mentioned how we thought we got too many e-mails. We had seen how Steve Jobs had launched the first iPhone a few months earlier and we had heated debates about its usefulness, just like Steve Balmer had done. Apple dropped the word "Computer" from its company name "Apple Computer". Maybe one of us had an iPhone, although I cannot remember who had. Google existed. Facebook was three years old. Dropbox was born.

Last Friday, November 2017, another ten years have gone by. We tried to meet in full numbers and we managed to get to about 80% of attendance. We are now all 48 years old. Life has taught us the challenges of family life. Some of us have met their second or third partner. Some of our kids are graduating at university. No-one is a grandparent yet. Those who were there were healthy and fit. We did not talk about our cars, we talked about wine and restaurants (so much better). I am sure that a few came with (semi) electric cars and (at most semi-) autonomous cars. If you count all devices, we now on average have 2,3 computers per family member, all intensively networked, wirelessly of course ("what's the wifi code of this place?"). iPhones and smartphones are lying in front of every single one of us and no-one can resist touching it and swiping the screen once in a while. Family photos are shown on the glass screens. We are at a point were we have solved the e-mail deluge by not feeling obliged to read them all. Facebook is passé for us. WhatsApp, Messenger and Telegram are what we use to communicate (some during our dinner). iPhone is at edition X, although none of us had an X. Artificial Intelligence is a topic, most admirably embraced my my friend the M.D., who understands that he will be disrupted ("If you can't beat it, join it" - were his exact words). The depreciation of the Euro is a topic, with a smart friend pointing out that a Euro is worth less than half of what it was on its first day. The word "cryptocurrency" is not mentioned, a bit(coin) to my surprise. Someone mentions seeing a drone during his holiday. We exchange the Youtube movie of Boston Dynamics' backflipping robot. None of us owns a robot ( not counting the lawn mower or vacuum cleaner). The leading Belgian financial newspaper considers a backflipping robot "totally irrelevant".

November 2027, another ten years will have gone by. 40 years after graduation. I hope that we manage to achieve 50% of attendance. We will be 58 years old. Life will have taught us more lessons. Of health, of love, of death maybe. Several of us will be grandparents. Many of us will no longer own a car but will have come by ride-sharing in a driverless car-as-a-service service. Diesel company cars will be rare. Our phones will no longer be on the table, in front of us. They will be attached or superficially integrated into our bodies. Desktop PCs will be rare and our portables, tablets will have been replaced or eat least complemented by augmented reality, virtual reality and "tablets on paper". In the United Arab Emirates, Uber and Nasa will have a joint venture and will fly people around in autonomous drone airtaxis (will they use "Waze for Drones"?). My friend, the visionary M.D., will have become exponentially successful, at the expense of his M.D. colleagues who kept stubbornly believing that their human knowledge, intelligence and experience was irreplaceable. We will have continued to have lost a lot of buying power thanks to our belief that the Euro is real and cryptocurrency is fake. Some will have protected their assets by diversifying across traditional and digital assets. We may even have an ICO-millionaire among us by then. A lot of us will have a robot at home, or will be assisted by robots in their professional activities. We will probably not call them "robots". A.I. will be everywhere and we will no longer call it A.I. We will still call it a loudspeaker, a car, a drone, a fridge, an oven, a colleague... The leading Belgian financial newspaper will no longer exist in paper edition or maybe not at all. It will have been replaced by news and content federating API's - which we will pay for - that deliver their input to our V.R., our soft-tablets or directly to our bodies/brains.

November 2037. Provided that "singularity" has not yet occurred and "Skynet" has not yet become self-aware, I hope to meet my dear friends again, at the age of 68. Fit, healthy, happy and as fun and interesting as they were when they were 18, 28, 38 and 48. What a bunch! :-)