The Year 2000
It was crazy just to think about... 2000! it sounded so futuristic! And I thought, in 2000 I'll be 30. That's just crazy, imagine being 30! I'll probably be dead by then anyway.
Everywhere you looked there was innovation of the highest order, everyone was coding and hacking and... imagining how cool the future was going to be.
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| I had one of these for a bit |
Absolutely every thing I imagined the future would contain has utterly failed to materialise. In the 90's I had t-shirts with flat LEDs sewn on and I figured, not long now, clothes will be just one enormous LED display. How freaking cool would that be! You could be wearing a suit or a costume or be a superhero or...
Clearly, many thought of it and they also didn't see dollar signs. So it just didn't happen.
I figured one day we'll be able to get TV direct from the satellite - how crazy is that? Right up there with colour television, a mad dream. Then one day I was given satellite TV, for free, 89 channels! Insane! Packed it up a year later when Top Gear was only re-runs. 89 channels of bollocks even more awful than the local channels, which I'd have paid not to see.
Personal robots, electric cars, nuclear power, PCs, cars... none yielded the scenario I imagined. For one silly little reason.
The future is determined entirely by those who can make a profit from it. Examine your dreams and note the potential financial rewards... and if you don't see any, it ain't gonna happen. It's now 2022, we're living in the far future and all it is, it seems, is one unholy mess. And you imagine you'll be happy, and you are happy... but there's a lot missing. Like space. Like fish.
ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE
What has advanced are the myriad of painful ways we used to have to live. My mom tells me she went to visit an aunt 'To pick the black bits out of the rice, wash handkerchiefs with bar soap... and every Friday we'd go to my uncle's house to listen to 'Cheyenne'." Which means the family didn't have a radio. That was the highlight of her week.
That was 1950. get to 1975 and my highlight was Buck Rogers, in black and white. I worshipped that series. Anything sci-fi; Space 1999, Six million dollar man (when 6 million was a LOT)
For my part, cars are a shitload easier to drive. Old cars wouldn't crank in the cold, and if they did you had to give plenty of choke and sit there forever while the machine 'warmed up'. The heater never worked, there was no A/C and changing gear was a nightmare of grinding noises and smoke, the thing would overheat, had horrible seat belts and you had to really get physical just to point it in the desired direction. You needed to be a mechanic to own one. Sure they were heavy but they were all REAR WHEEL DRIVE, all of them. Because front wheel drive is stupid.
I once won some tickets (on a radio show) to see a movie. The ticket said 2 people / cars, so we assumed two cars would get into the drive-in. Nope. it was 2 people or one car. Thirteen people clambered onto the Morris Minor and in we went.
Food is easier to prepare and arrives at the supermarket clean and fresh. No more trundling to the butcher to watch him carve up some animal, no more hunting down veggies at the market and having to clean absolutely everything you bought. Nothing came in packaging, paper and glass were about it. No more deep freezers, month-end queues, cashiers typing the price of everything into the register or forming lifelong bonds with doctors, mechanics, lawyers and others whose services you'll eventually need.
Best of all, you start the car and drive. That's really something.
