As we head into the future, and experience continued exponential growth in technology, I believe it’s important to pause and reflect on how we got here and where we’re going.
Today’s news can be overwhelming! I personally tend to avoid political matters, even during an election year, but the ban on DJI drones is a topic I’ve been tracking closely until it was clear that my Air 2S photography drone wouldn’t eventually become a $1,000 “brick”.
Regardless, there is so much happening right now that it’s hard to know what topics to follow and what skills to spend time learning. Every week, major technological breakthroughs are being announced and tech stacks are in a constant state of flux!
Back in My Day…
When I was growing up in the 80’s, the only news I saw was when I’d pass a newspaper stand, or turn the TV on right at 5:00 PM to catch the headlines. By 5:20 they were moving on to weather and sports. If I missed it, I’d have to try again at 10:00, or dial up my friends to find out what happened. At that age, I didn’t care much about the news unless it was about the Space Shuttle anyways.
In those days, loading BASIC programs by cassette tape was the most advanced technology I had to work with. Plus, I had to go to the library, or consult my parent’s encyclopedias, if I wanted to learn about something outside of K-12 curriculum.
I hated school! But, I can say that I was lucky enough to go to schools that offered robotics, rocketry, electronics, and programming to help me solidify my passion for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), which wasn’t an educational term until 2001. Unfortunately, I never connected the value of math until I was an adult…which is a topic for a different article 🤓
Exponential Growth
I recently learned that humans will experience more progress over the next 20 years than we have over the past 200.
Stop and think about what that means!
What happened over the past 200 years?
In 1824 the average life expectancy was around 40 years old. Around that same time photography was a new and exciting concept.
In 1844 the Telegraph was invented allowing messages to be sent over a wire network via Morse Code. In 1876 the telephone allowed voice communication. At that time, the internal combustion engine was also invented, but it took another 10 years before they powered automobiles.
Even electric lights weren’t very common at that time!
It was certainly a time of incredible growth and wealth!
2024
Today we live almost twice as long, our cars are powered by electricity and practically dive themselves. Most of us carry a camera, a video camera, a telephone, a television, and a computer more powerful than the one that took mankind to the moon in our pocket every where we go. Not to mention that we can communicate instantly accross the globe and basically have all the knowledge in the world at our fingertips with bots that can act as tutors to help us learn just about anything we want to know.
Tomorrow
So, where do we go from here? I guess that depends on what humanity decides to do with our newly found technical powers.
Some will focus on the social media pit of dispare and spend their days trolling and critizing others hidden behind digital anonymity.
My personal dream is that we all progress together towards a collaborative and peaceful utopia, where hate no longer exists, but I’m keenly aware that a dystopian future is far more likely. Especially as the gap between wealth and poverty widens. Not to mention that America’s two primary presidential candidates are incapable of answering a question during a debate 🤪
I’m one who believes that the only way to be comfortable in our unknown future is to embrace the cutting-edge.
For example, if you live in fear that robots will some day take away your job, then learn how they work and how to build, or at least program them. Not to stop the progress, but to remain relevant as they move into the mainstream.
It’s comparable to the candle maker of the late 1800s becoming an electrician!
What will work look like in the future when cars drive themselves, and bots handle customer service, warehouse, or even engineering jobs?
How will we make our money to afford what will likely be expensive luxuries?
My Personal Areas of Focus
The way my mind works causes me to keep a wide range of topics in focus at all times. Those topics generally have an overarching theme, which allows my attention to bounce around freely, which keeps me from getting bored, while continuing to make progress toward larger common goals. The following topics may seem completely unrelated, but I’m sure you’ll see a couple of major skill themes start to emerge as you continue reading.
Unity & Blender
When I started Tech-Multiverse I was interested in learning as much as I could about metaverse technologies. That exploration helped me understand that Unity and Blender were the most common tools for building virtual worlds and spatial experiences for XR, so I’ve narrowed the metaverse development skills I want to strengthen down to those two tools.
What’s interesting is that I’ve never been big on games, which Unity is known for, but I’ve always been drawn to multimedia like 3D modeling, motion graphics, animation, and interactive user experiences. I do have 15 years of Flash experience under my belt! 🤣
Becoming fluent with both Blender (for modeling & animation) and Unity (for interactive 3D environments) will set me up with the skills needed to build XR experiences, but will also support my creative and artistic side.
For example, checkout my favorite Blender artist Polyfjord and his mechanical creatures. His tutorials are amazing! The first few seconds of this video will show you the incredible power of having solid skills in using Blender:
Can you imagine combining something that incredible with the ability to fully interact with it in a virtual world? Here’s a simple interaction I created following a Unity Road to the Metaverse tutorial that uses a simple click interaction to explode a boring break caliper model. This exercise helped me realize that I could provide users with controls to drive virtual mechanical creatures!
Robotics
Speaking of mechanical creatures, robotics is something that has fascinated me my whole life! I was recently considering buying a Hexapod like this one, but once I learned how to simulate robots with ROS2 I realized I could gain robotics experience without spending a dime! I already have several robots and drones that sit around most of the time. So, why spend more money?
The cool thing is that you can also simulate robots with ROS in Unity! As I gain more knowledge about doing that, I should be able to design user controls that mimic a real world controller (like my Taranis QX7) to drive those virtual robotic creatures, while keeping their overall design aligned to the real world. Who knows? Someday, I may become a robot designer while hardly touching any hardware!
Drones
I know you can simulate drones, and I’m sure you could do it in Unity. For me, drones are something I prefer to experience in the real world. I’ve been flying drones for a while and have different drones to serve different purposes.
My custom built FPV Alien Whoop micro racing drone (sitting on my knee in this picture) is my favorite drone of all time! I mentioned not being into games, but I do enjoy racing. What I love most is ripping this 30 gram robot around my living room. Damn, this thing goes FAST!! I’m so glad that it’s small enough that I haven’t broken anything I’ve crashed in to!
There’s just something about seeing the world from the view of a small bird while being in complete control (well, almost) of your flight path. It’s actually hilarious to experience being chased by a cat or caught in a dog’s mouth 😅
This project is in need of some new motors, and I’m ready to upgrade my FPV goggles to something much more comfortable than the crappy ones I bought to see if I’d even enjoy FPV flying, so those upgrades will be a gift to myself in the near future.
Other than needing to build it, which scratches that technical itch, this project is mostly about the pure enjoyment of flying.
My DJI Air 2S is an AI powered photography drone that will literally follow and record me on a hike while avoiding obstacles along it’s flight path. It’s also great for gutter and roof inspections!
I’m relieved to learn that I’ll still be able to fly it after the DJI ban! Unfortunately, this drone doesn’t get much air time, which is something I plan to change this summer.
I can’t help but feel like the main reason it doesn’t get much air time is due to it being more utilitarian. Having an AI copilot can make flying this somewhat confusing, unless I turn off all the sensors and fly in sport mode. Only, the Air 2S sport mode is more like a luxury sedan than a race car. Plus, crashing this thing puts me at a high risk of having to send it in to pay for repairs rather than fixing it myself.
It also requires a license, due to it’s weight, which I need to renew this year!
My two DJI RoboMaster TT Tello Talent drones are a ton of fun for exploring how to control drone swarms with code! They’re powered with ESP32 modules, which I’ve used for IoT projects.
They’re also capable of supporting AI, which can be used to avoid obstacles and identify objects.
One of my biggest planned projects is to control a swarm with ROS2, and use an LLM to convert my voice commands into something these drones can take action on, but I still have more to learn about ROS before I’m able to pull that off.
I’m hoping to be able simulate these drones to help me understand all the programming, then transfer that directly to them in the real world once I have it working how I’d like.
Eventually, I plan to have them integrated into my smart home to patrol my home with a voice command. I’m even hoping to have them speak to me (like a chatbot) with a live video feed.
Smart Home
My home is already considered “smart”, but I’m constantly thinking of ways to improve it’s intelligence. I currently have 7 cameras, on two platforms, around my modest sized home. If someone comes on my property, I’ll know about it immediately. If they ring the doorbell, they’ll show up on my refrigerator, and several other screens throughout my home, where I can talk to them, if I choose.
Just the other day, I was making something in the kitchen while thinking about a project I’m working on. I simply asked out loud, “Does Storybook support both server-side and client-side components?” My home’s AI powered assistant provided me with an accurate answer, allowing me to keep my train of thought rolling without having to stop and access a computer. I would have never imagined having the ability to do that when I was a kid, but it’s here and I LOVE it! 🥰
Overall, I see my home as a type of robot. I’ve been approaching the skills and experience I gain with extreme caution, since security must be a top consideration. I don’t want my home so automated that some hacker can lock me out or stop my coffee from brewing in the morning!
Skills for Work
Lately, my job has been less research focused and more about building data pipelines and playing MLOps. It’s not my favorite daily grind, so I’m excited that I’m heading back into some projects with UI and systems design related work.
I’ve always enjoyed front-end development and UX design. Data wasn’t something I was excited to learn, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve fallen in love with good data architecture over the years.
You may see me share projects that some how relate to me learning new skills to support my day-to-day work projects. I don’t plan to post about my job, though.
Artificial Intelligence
I am flat out obsessed with AI! I have no doubt the benefits it will provide, but I do recognize there will be side-effects. There is always a balance of good and bad with the progression of technology. Just look at the internet. It changed humanity by making us better, AND worse 😕
AI is the tech that binds all my projects together. Having worked with machine learning for years, I see it as more of a tool, while also acting as a research project. For example, testing how creative GPT-4o can be by having it generate Stable Diffusion Deforum animations. Here’s a video I made to show how that went:
I’ve been interested in using AI to bring my ideas to life faster than ever!
I can build applications way faster these days, thanks to GPT. I’m still the designer, but I don’t have to waste time reading documentation to get code to work. That process also helps me learn faster!
I’ve been very interested is Pixar’s USD (Universal Scene Description), which is data that can be written by AI and imported into game engines like Unity and Unreal.
Here’s a cool video that happens to show how AI was used to create a mechanical creature that you can control in a virtual world! I did mention all this would connect in some way 😉
At some point, I plan to explore using AI with the stock market. That will start with a simulation to see how that would go before I even consider using it with real money, but the progress made in that idustry is real.
I’m also working toward using AI to help design T-shirts faster. I’ve sold them for years, but need to speed up the process. Using Stable Diffusion to create design templates, and using web agents to handle tracking trends and uploading new designs will help me increase volume and sales.
Conclusion
If anything, this article helps me realize that all my crazy ideas and exploration do culminate into skills that will help me stay relevant as technology progresses into the future.
Regardless if skills related to the metaverse, robotics, AI, or application & system development are necessary, I feel like I’ll be ready for it. I just need to put in the work to become more fluent in using the tools.
Things constantly change, so I’ll be keeping my eye out for how things come together to build a future we can’t even imagine today. I’ve given some solid examples of how I’ve seen that happen…and we’re just getting started.
So, yes I will be continuing to analyze the overwhelming volume of headlines. Maybe I’ll spin up some new AI agents to take on the burden of tracking and summarizing them for me! 🤓
Be sure to subscribe if you’re interested in joining me as I continue on this journey into the future!
Header Image
Today’s image wasn’t quite as impressive as what I had in mind, but it has the general feel I was hoping for. It’ll be a long time before our world looks anything like this!
Prompt: cinematic film still a cityscape, (futuristic utopian society), photorealism, hyper-detailed, sunrise <lora:add-detail-xl:0.8> <lora:xl_more_art-full_v1:0.45> <lora:detailed_notrigger:0.8> . shallow depth of field, vignette, highly detailed, high budget, bokeh, cinemascope, moody, epic, gorgeous, film grain, grainy
Negative prompt: anime, cartoon, graphic, text, painting, crayon, graphite, abstract, glitch, deformed, mutated, ugly, disfigured, low quality, bad anatomy
Steps: 35, Sampler: DPM++ 2M SDE Karras, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 405662271, Size: 1344×768, Model hash: 440a7f226b, Model: protovisionXLHighFidelity3D_releaseV660Bakedvae, Clip skip: 2, Style Selector Enabled: True, Style Selector Randomize: False, Style Selector Style: Cinematic, Lora hashes: “add-detail-xl: 9c783c8ce46c, xl_more_art-full_v1: fe3b4816be83, detailed_notrigger: 0f984fef7394”, Version: v1.6.1
