The Future is Now

originally penned on LiveBlog for FB friends on 2:10am November 25th, 2008

Mood: calm
Music: Driven Out – The Fixx

“So now I’m driving in my car, I used to be able to walk this far
Now I turn on the light. I used to be able to sleep at night.
I’m cooking with microwaves to warm up food not seen the soil
plugged into my TV I’m used to the lies they’re telling me
I hope it comes, it comes, it comes around.”

On a trip from Texas, at a Colorado stopover, I went to the sink in the women’s lavatory to wash my hands.

Think this is a strange sentence to start a blog with?

Well, everything I’m about to tell you is actually quite strange…to a person living in an earlier time. All I had to do was stick my hands under the spigot, where a stream of water automatically came out, and then dry them using a blower I never had to touch. I’m sure such a thing must have been written about at some point in time in popular science fiction. Convenience is often a theme in futuristic novels and also on TV. “Look at the dream world you could live in! Flying cars! Automatic appliances in the kitchen! Robots that will do your work for you!”

Know what? The Future is Now.

Sometimes it amazes me just how prescient some science fiction writers and movie makers were. Consider Jules Verne, who wrote stories in the 1860’s featuring submarines, spaceships to the moon, and travel around the world by flight, before they had been invented. Or think about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), a silent movie about a grand city in the future where working class and white collar classes were separated from each other above and below the ground. Metropolis featured many amazing things now typical today. For example, it depicted skyscrapers, neon lights, travel by airplane and monorail, telecommunication (complete with video), machines to take over the work of man, and somewhat revealing women’s fashion.

Once, it was thought that the invention of machines, electricity, and the rise of industry would result in a shorter and more efficient workday. What the dreamers didn’t foretell is that these inventions actually resulted in more work, because doing the work became faster and easier. As a matter of fact, I’m sitting here at my amazing calculator (also known as a desktop PC), writing this blog to people that I know and don’t know, by the light of an electric lamp containing energy saving bulbs. My cats (one of whom is on my lap) no longer need to wander outside to find fresh mice to dine upon, as I feed them a pre-made food tailored to meet their nutritional needs. And heaven forbid there should ever be a fire, as I would forget the family jewels and take my surrogate children with me.

There’s good and bad about living in the future. It enriches our life on some levels. Everyone is as close as an email or cel phone or even Facebook. I have made a new category of internet “friend” that wasn’t possible 40 years ago. I could even hop into my aerodynamic, computerized, gasoline-fed Honda coupe and, assuming you live close enough, visit you. Thank goodness I have no need of cranking and heating up the boiler to get it to start.

On the other hand, we are all becoming more alienated from each other. When I pick up the phone and dial the number of a business, do I hear a person’s voice or just a recording of one? Does my internet avatar reflect some aspect of me or does it simply serve as a mask so that I can remain safely anonymous? And how easily can you convey an emotion in text? I have no doubt that some people will read some of my blog posts as self-pitying drivel and others will say it is philosophical. But how do you know which it is when I haven’t actually spoken a word?

Now that the future has caught up with the present, what will our generation’s future be?