Future World, Old World June 10, 2009 Glenn Madden
Most people still look around and ask what happened to the dreams of having Star Trek like world our parents were expecting us to be living in. What happened to the James Bond gadgets?
WELL what most people do not realize is that those things are here with us today, at least the ones that worked their way into society. But we get so used to them that the world looks normal to have them and we do not see just how far we have came in the last 50 years.
Then there are some of the futuristic ideas that even though have been developed into working models, they just never got used. This is for various reasons. One being marketability of the product. How much does it cost versus more conventional items that achieve similar goals.
Then there is the safety issue. Can you imagine a world full of jet packs. It would be impossible to keep them from banging heads. Imagine a drunk driver in a jet pack. That is not a bug on your windshield, it is uncle Sam.
To really see how far we have come in the last few years you need to imagine yourself somewhere in the past first. Up until the 1600,s all science was considered evil and the work of devils. The church ruled most of the civilized world and kept many advancements at bay. Before that we went thousands of years with fire and the wheel as the only thing that kept humans above the animals.
It was around this time the church began to lose it’s grip on the world through internal changes.
Then came the industrial revolution in the 1800’s. We began to see automation taking place producing all kinds of material luxuries the world had only dreamed about. But many of these mechanical beasties had been used at times throughout history. Nothing had much changed in the functionality.
The real world changing events did not take place until electricity starting getting into everyone’s homes in the form of the simple light bulb.
Then the radio and TV. The world was hungry for what the church had considered magic for centuries. The genie was loose and there was no putting her back into the bottle.
But nothing really happened again dramatically until we developed the transistor. That is when even today that most people could not tell you how something really works. Most people have no idea how the TV works and just accept it. It could be magic as far as they know.
Now, just to imagine the extremes. Take a man before the industrial time line and drop him into the middle of Manhattan. Can you get the picture. Then take him for a stroll through some stores. The cameras, TV’s, elevator music and hundred of other modern technology that did not exist in his time.
This would be future world. Even someone from 75 years ago would go through a culture shock if they were dropped into our modern world.
The future is all around us. My question is will all of what we see today look so antique again in another 100 years. Will we be living in a world full of clones and positronic brains. Will there be a colony on mars. This latter might could happen, but only if we find gold up there. Money is the driving force today of almost all modern changes and new technology. If it will sell, someone will build it.
