In the early nineties, I saw a glimpse of what it would be like to carry a smartphone in the not-too-distant future. Several weeks later, I saw a future with digital photos and car-based GPS systems.

Rewatching old episodes of Beyond 2000 offers a window into how future versions of ourselves might view the current moment. Through the episodes, one can learn about the different strategies companies took to try to introduce novel ideas into the market. Many of the designs ended up being either an accessible wedge for the later disruptive technology (e.g. Kodak photo CDs for analog cameras) or a bit too forward-looking to be practical (the bulky wearable computer that holds a CD player). In each of these cases, the disruptive technologies that would pave the way for large-scale adoption had yet to be developed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to find the sweet spot in technology that both shows the future while capturing value to benefit people today. Does it start by showcasing the art of the possible and then adapting those concepts into real world use cases? Who are the partners one can engage with to get early feedback on whether an idea is moving in the right direction? Here, I’ve come across another video, an interview of NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang at Stanford. Unlike old episodes of Beyond 2000, something tells me this video will still be relevant thirty years from now.