Back in 2007, Brian Williams anchored an NBC Nightly News segment about what the year 2017 would be like and what scientific advancements would make our lives easier. The video (which you can watch below) posits that microchips implanted under our fingers could easily identify us at the airport and in emergency situations. It hoped that facial recognition software would help us catch terrorists.
Flash forward to the end of 2016. We don’t have any life- or time-saving microchips, and facial recognition software is most commonly used by advertisers to sell us things on Facebook.
But cynicism aside, there is hope that 2017 may include some groundbreaking discoveries, medical advancements, and widespread implementation of awesome inventions. Even though we’ve disappointed 2007 Brian Williams in an alternate timeline, we’ve got a lot to look forward to next year, and in more ways than not, the future is now.
