#6 The Future - Olivia

Look, I'm no fortune teller.  

Let's make that clear before we go on.  In the event that what I say comes across as a prediction within the length of this post, I want you to remember the first sentence.  I'm no fortune teller.  I'm also definitely not Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking.

Besides, trying to describe the deep future is like watching pro-wrestling.  Deeply entertaining, but you must remind yourself it's all talk.  It can be heartbreaking to watch those who still believe.  

We live in 2010.  

We're barely ankle-deep in this century, if you think about it.  I don't believe anyone thought it would be this way when we were this far in the last century.

Even the 30's, 40's, and 50' were pretty sure we'd have some kind of contact with aliens by now, at least in more of a Roswell, New Mexico kind of way than a state of Arizona way.

Antiquated 1950's pop culture totally had no idea that kids would still be wearing rolled-up skinny leg jeans.  And I'm sure there are those who are slightly disappointed that their life isn't a little more space suits and a little less track suits. 

Or those who are even further bummed that things don't fly, teleport, or in general, include more lasers.  My dad may even be numbered among them.  

We still like to play Nostradamus though.  

But instead of trying to predict what the next day will hold, perhaps we should spend more time on how today will look when it's being examined as the lens of yesterday.  How that snapshot will develop is the closest thing we have to genuine prediction.  

My communications professors, the ones that always try to keep us young spunky things on the constant cusp of a the new era in media, like to remind us that the first cars looked a lot like the buggies that require horses.  They say this to suggest that the next big thing may look very much like what we have, but with a slightly different spin.  We go off of what we already have.  

Or, if you are going to paint the future, go crazy.  

Even in late 2008, Flight of the Conchords would sing, "The distant future, the year 2000 ..." before ripping into a killer binary solo.  

And the late great Conan O'brien show use to have a sketch where they would delve into the "future," always beginning with, "In the year 2000 ... " Classic. 

Dream big.  That or, like they say in Back to the Future, make like a tree and get out of here.  

What've you got to lose?

You can't say anyone predicted the likes of Lady Gaga.  

Or the popularity of string cheese.  

I just hope they still have dance parties in the future. 

Don Replies:

I really like the phrase "ankle-deep in this century."  It's both visually descriptive and metaphorically accurate;  a lot of times I feel like we're going through this new century as though we stepping in something sticky and unpleasant.  Perhaps that's why in writing about the future, the both of us took a bit of a nostalgic approach to it.  Writing at the dog's tail of of this decade (okay, that's not "ankle-deep" but I'm trying), I wonder if people 50 or 100 years ago were more optimistic about their future or if that's just they way we imagined them.  Either way, optimism about what's coming down the road seems old-fashioned and a bit corny like an old 78 rpm record scratching its tune through the giant horn of a Victrola. 

I think there was a time in the past when a lot of people felt that innovations in science and technology would eventually lead us to a better life.  And perhaps it has.  Aggro-science is producing more food than ever. People are living longer now, and you do not hear a lot about kids getting crippled by polio or babies dying from the measles.  On the other hand, most of us have seen at least one of the Terminator movies, and I don't think as a whole, society has the confidence it once had in the basic benevolence of scientists.  We've seen too much of corporate greed and what can happen when callous executives order the dumping of chemical waste. Furthermore, it would be hard to name a new technology of the last 50 years that wasn't appropriated by the military to help them kill people who get in their way.

So now instead of movies depicting funny and eccentric scientists who create flubber or who comically shrink their children to the size of pocket change (only to restore them with no harm done just before the credits start to roll), we get insane movie scientists who release superbugs that kill off 99% of the population and turn us into brain chewing zombies.  Or even worse, we get crazy surgeons who sew their kidnap victims into giant human bugs.  Even real life scientists sound scary crazy when they start talking about micro-circuitry the size of blood cells that uses artificial intelligence to adapt itself for its own autonomous purposes.  I can't predict what the next 50 years will bring, but without my rocketcar standing by to make a hasty getaway, I'm not sure I'd want to be around for all of it anyway.