wide eyed clean faced optimism

Every so often I'm struck by the idea that our constructed environment is critically incomplete. There's just so much work to be done, even aside from inventing new things, in just refining what we already have.

The infrastructure of our body politic is generally functional, but what I'm talking about is a layer of polish, or many layers of polish, that will make it beautiful as well.

Every bare piece of concrete along the freeway needs a fresco, every bare rooftop needs a garden, every web page needs another layer of smartness and connectedness, every mobile phone needs to be as capable as an iPhone, and then we need to improve the software further to make it more respectful and responsive to us as human beings... Every intersection needs a smart traffic light, and then we need to improve ALL of the traffic light algorithms together, so that we sense approaching cars and eliminate red lights almost entirely...

We can see all the work that needs to be done just by opening our eyes and looking around, and sometimes it staggers me that, with everything that we've done so far, we've only scratched the surface, we've only begun to learn and build, and lay the foundation of the way our grandchildren will live. What a great time to be alive.