Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The future is right next door

Used to be, I would read about something happening in China and it would seem impossibly far away. Now I see that there is a second J-20, and I think hey, this is in my neighborhood.

Not actually next door.

Of course, "next door" in a big place like China means a lot of things. My neighborhood is nowhere near a military airfield. And it's not at all clear that the J-20 is the future of anything except cool-looking prototypes. But there is no question that I am in a different world now--a world where the building across the harbor flashes the weather forecast on a 200-foot billboard, escalator handrails are sanitized once an hour, and a mysterious stealth fighter is rolled out for all the world's cell phone cameras to see.

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