Sometimes the sum of two technologies is greater than 2 and when you experience it the first time it’s magic. Yesterday was such a day for me. We’ve enjoyed wireless internet on smartphones for years. Voice over IP telephony to anywhere around the world is the status quo. We’ve also had Bluetooth technology for over a decade now. Active noise cancelation in aviation headsets has gone mainstream around the same time.
But yesterday I’ve used all these technologies the first time together in one application: Calling Germany from my airplane over West Texas while en rourte to Santa Fe, NM as pilot in command cruising with seamless ease and the engine humming at 95dBA. I was wearing my Bose A20 active noise cancellation headset with Bluetooth connected to my Samsung Galaxy S7 cell phone (which processor was designed by our team in Austin, TX I might add). I was talking to ATC a minute ago over the radio, when I made a phone call to my mom in Germany, while airborne. The voice was loud and clear – pure magic! Magnificent!

Layered Technology at work.