Universal Coordinated Time
Not only that, but even more inventions are being created daily. Now products make everyday jobs faster, easier, more convenient, and also safer. New ideas are going from concept to reality at lightning speeds, satisfying bosth customers and distributors.
Systems now exist to give directions to drivers on the fastest way to get to their destinations. These systems will some day be so advanced that drivers will travel without touching their steering wheels. Not only do they use global positioning satellites (another important recent invention) to pinpoint their exact location, they can even call a pre-programmed emergency number and tell an operator where the car is in the event of an accident. Some inventions we see as luxuries today may very well be standard on all cars in the not-so-distant future.
Today's vehicles are far more advanced than even 15 years ago. Inventions like electronic spark control and fuel injection have made cars more economical and powerful at the same time. A 6-cylinder car today has almost as much power as earlier V8's, while the former uses much less gas. Alternative fuel systems are being perfected, and the first practical electric car is already on the market. Cars are safer than ever, too. With dual airbags available in nearly every car and side airbags becoming more popular, the injuries sustained in a high-speed crash are even less severe than ever before. Today's technology will bring us new innovations that will change the way we all travel.
Probably one of the fastest-changing areas of our world is computers. Every day a new piece of hardware or software promises to make everything before it obsolete. For example, only four years ago, 66 MHz was the ultimate in speed, and a double-speed CD-ROM drive was blazingly fast. Now, 225 MHz processors are available along with CD-ROM drives eight times faster than the original ones. In 1981, 640 Kilobytes of Random Access Memory were thought to be enough for every application and hard drives were only dreams. Today, a standard system ships with 16 Megabytes of RAM and a 1 Gigabyte hard drive, while 32 MB of RAM and 2.5 GB hard drives are not unusual. Computers in various sizes, shapes, forms, and designs will continue to be an important part of almost anything in the future.
When you stop to think about it, everything that will happen in the future rests on what we do today. The present is yours to explore because, as the saying goes, "There's no time like the present."
