Future Ghosts
This week as I flew over Apple’s HQ, I wondered if history would repeat, like the infinite loop itself.
Google took over SGI’s campus, just as Palantir took over PayPal’s. The bloodline of tenants that specific buildings have seen over decades would make a great coffee table book.
Before Facebook moved to their current location, they were at 1601 California in Palo Alto. Previous tenant: Agilent. Agilent was the inheritor of the spirit of the original HP, so I bet the ghosts of Bill and Dave were hanging around in the rafters. I wonder what they thought of the Obscene Fortune and Random Failure of the Chaos Monkeys.
An unknown aerospace startup in Orange County occupies a cavernous space that was previously occupied by Boeing, just as Amazon took over Macy’s in Seattle.
Back to the photo of Apple HQ above. There have been no occupants prior to Apple, but it seems inevitable that at some point in the future, some other company will occupy it. I wonder who they will be.
I occupy one of two seats in a carbon-fiber version of an open-cockpit WWII era plane. Who sat here before me? The technology really hasn’t changed much. But as with all technology, automation is coming, and soon no-one at all will be sitting here — at least with their hands on the controls — and coffee table book ghosts can laugh at us from the rafters.
