Future Imperfect
CNN is advertising a week-long series on The Future. This sounds interesting, since the future is one common goal we are all rushing towards at a rate of almost eighty-seven thousand seconds per day. The future is one of those things we can enjoy imagining even though we can never actually see it (like an honest politician). The future is still fluid, not set. It's actual final shape will depend on the decisions of many thousands of millions of people, and the Peter Principle guarantees that a lot of them will not be competent to make such decisions (The Peter Principle states that in any hierarchy anyone competent at their given task can be promoted until they are promoted to a position they are incompetent at, and there they stay, doing their job incompetently).
The Future was a pretty neat place when I was a kid. By now we'd have colonies on the Moon and Mars, and be expanding to the other planets. Sure computers would be room-filling behemoths, and any really powerful computer would be a building unto itself, but still, that was one future that was so bright you just gotta wear shades.
Even now I can hear Avery Brooks yelling "I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars??" Remember your crush-hour commute, however, when ten caffeine-crazed drivers jousted for a gap just a shade too small for any of their cars and you'll realize how truly blessed we are to not have every clown on the road taking to the skies.
TV has been showing us visions of The Future since well before I was born (for reference this was barely a month before Yuri Gegarin became the first man in space). Much of it came in the form of cautionary warnings about the possible mis-use of technology, like making the Starfleet Duty Pajamas without any pockets- the horror!! Some technology sounds really cool, like shoes with LEDs that light up when you walk. Of course, far more low-tech weaponry is used by the poorer kids to remove such shoes from the wealthier ones; evolution has traditionally been very unfriendly towards the slow in the herd.
Some video visions of the future are wildly optimistic. Computers of The Future can never crash, hang up or even be switched off. Some are rather more pessimistic, even depressing- but that's life: An unpredictable mixture of the good, the bad, the ugly and the wonderful.
So go ahead, CNN, tell us what The Future will bring us... but just maybe, stop to think about who even twenty years back had ever even imagined blogs?
The Future was a pretty neat place when I was a kid. By now we'd have colonies on the Moon and Mars, and be expanding to the other planets. Sure computers would be room-filling behemoths, and any really powerful computer would be a building unto itself, but still, that was one future that was so bright you just gotta wear shades.
Even now I can hear Avery Brooks yelling "I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars??" Remember your crush-hour commute, however, when ten caffeine-crazed drivers jousted for a gap just a shade too small for any of their cars and you'll realize how truly blessed we are to not have every clown on the road taking to the skies.
TV has been showing us visions of The Future since well before I was born (for reference this was barely a month before Yuri Gegarin became the first man in space). Much of it came in the form of cautionary warnings about the possible mis-use of technology, like making the Starfleet Duty Pajamas without any pockets- the horror!! Some technology sounds really cool, like shoes with LEDs that light up when you walk. Of course, far more low-tech weaponry is used by the poorer kids to remove such shoes from the wealthier ones; evolution has traditionally been very unfriendly towards the slow in the herd.
Some video visions of the future are wildly optimistic. Computers of The Future can never crash, hang up or even be switched off. Some are rather more pessimistic, even depressing- but that's life: An unpredictable mixture of the good, the bad, the ugly and the wonderful.
So go ahead, CNN, tell us what The Future will bring us... but just maybe, stop to think about who even twenty years back had ever even imagined blogs?
