Home / Blog / I spent these last two weeks in another world

I spent these last two weeks in another world

Roberto Saracco July 1, 2022 Blog 145 Views

Is this a sunset or a dawn? Pretty impossible to answer.

I spent the last two weeks without ever meeting a night. Sunlight reigned over darkness.

I experienced sunsets, or possibly dawns, without being able to tell them apart, You would tell me that sunset is towards the West, dawn comes from the East but that wasn’t true. Both came from the North.

Yes, you guessed right, I was in Iceland. I am writing these few lines, as I am back home, noticing that in two weeks I never had to take my wallet out. Whatever I had to pay could be settled with my Apple watch or with my smartphone, including paying a few cents to open up a lavatory door.

In the middle of no-where I parked the car in a vast empty lot. There was a sign asking to use the QRcode to pay for the parking, simply saying that the fee would help in keeping the place fully functional. It was just a click and I complied willingly.

Now I am back to Italy, and feeling to have stepped back into the past. On newspaper the big news is that starting today, July 1st, all service providers will have to accept credit/debit cards payment. I am pretty sure it will be an uphill battle.

It felt so good in Iceland settling everything via the cyberspace, taking a look every day of how much I spent and how I spent the money.

Tags

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.

One comment

  1. Patrick Henz
    July 3, 2022 at 1:36 pm

    “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet”, William Gibson (most probably)

Home | Contact & Support | Accessibility | Nondiscrimination Policy | IEEE Ethics Reporting | IEEE Privacy Policy | Terms
© Copyright 2022 IEEE – All rights reserved.
A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.