July 13, 2016 Vol. 13 No. 14

Chances are, most of you reading this are accustomed to seeing technology develop more or less slowly. Yes, that pace has become faster and faster in the last decade, and keeping up is no small challenge, impossible for some. A lot of those folks have sold their trucks or their companies and gotten out, defeated by an inability or unwillingness to tackle an unchartable future.

No surprise, no shame.

But most of us have found ways to accommodate a future that zooms in with a vengeance. The thing is, we’re dealing with a profusion of futures. Just when we think we have it all figured out, we find a new wrinkle on a wrinkle that only appeared last month.

And I’m betting that we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

Not just in technology terms but cultural and social too.

I’m thinking along these lines because of the astonishing phenomenon of Pokemon Go, the revival of an old game with a new twist that has grabbed the imagination of thousands upon thousands of young’uns. Within a week, this new smart phone app acquired more users than Twitter. And Nintendo, the owner, watched its market value rise by something like US$7.5 billion. In a week.

And it’s only available legally in the U.S. and Australia so far.

In a week. Think about that.

Now, a smart phone game obviously has nothing to do with trucking, at least not directly. It simply serves to illustrate just how quickly one particular future can smack us in the face and challenge our mental agility. That trait is more important now than ever before in history.

ALL OF THAT LEADS ME to the automated truck and the surprising speed with which it seems to be moving ahead. And platooning is even further advanced. On the manufacturing side every outfit you can imagine is trying to put its foot in one or both of those doors, yet I haven’t heard any clamoring for product from the fleet side. If ever there was a technology pushed into the industry more than this one, not counting government mandates, I don’t know what it might be.