At this, the dawning of a New Year, I come to you with an idea. It’s a simple idea with an almost impossible mandate – to predict the future, and then act as tour guide toward that future.
From the first moments that modern humans began to communicate and exchange ideas, we have pondered our past, present and future. Where have we come from? Why are we here? And where are we going?
Many would say that figuring out the past is easy; it is the past after all and we have been there. Turn around and gaze down the memory road; read about what happened when… it’s all there for us to learn from. Okay, I know what some of you are thinking; what about the fact that ‘history is written by the victors’ and all that rot. True, some of our collective past histories hinges on the reality that it is in fact bull shit (can I say bull shit on the internet?). For the most part however, we know what was going on and when.
The present is also pretty easy to deal with. It is what is happening now. Granted, what happens now takes place in a very short time line and one second it’s here and then it is the past. That said, today is today and we can see, hear, and even interact with the present (something we can’t really do with the past, no matter how hard we try to change what we have done, it cannot be undone).
Since we have (in the briefest of terms) considered the past and the present (we will get back to both in more detail by the way); let us now ponder the future. This is, in my opinion, the most elusive of time. It is a time that has not yet arrived, yet is passing us this very instant into oblivion. The future is always in our grasp yet just out of reach and at the same time drawing us toward it like a moth to a candle.
Where are we going? Good question (I’m glad I asked it); for humanity has been asking that question for some time and we never really get an answer (good or bad). Think of the future like Bob Dylan’s song ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.
We, us human’s, continue to question our existence; asking questions like where are we going? How many roads must a man (or woman) walk down? How many seas must a white dove sail? And on and on and on. Did you get the Bob Dylan references by-the-way? I now, I digress.
Where was I? Oh yes… the, sorry, our future. Humanity’s future and our place in the Universe.
Every year, around this time of year, I come across a plethora of predictions for the future. They all try to predict what direction we take in science, the economy, humanities, war, peace, crime, medicine, and the list continues.
Some of these predictions come from the media, some from professors’, some from futurists, writers, and even, I dear say, people that can (and never get it right) predict the future. You know the type, the ones that take your money and with the vaguest of questions and suggestions have predicted you are not only going to get pregnant, but fly off to Zanzibar and marry an African prince and get wealthy sending unsolicited emails to millions of people telling them you need to get money out of the country and you’ll cut them in for a percentage if only they wire into your bank a sum of money for you to pay the special ‘getting money out of the country tax’. Oh, sorry, but I digress again (I really have to stop doing that).
While some of the future predictions seem to be ‘spot on’, the vast majority are not. Take for example the predictions made during the 1950’s of where we would be by the 1980’s. Flying cars, jet packs (I’m really disappointed in that one. I wanted a jet pack), atomic cooking stoves, colonies on the moon and mars, a chicken in every pot, and so on.
Mind you, I am glad that we do not have flying cars just yet. Can you imagine the carnage; we can barely keep cars on the ground from piling up. Just think what would happen if we flew them around. Never mind watching out for bird droppings; now we have to look out for dumb ass drivers running out of fuel, taking the wrong turn and smashing into a sign post (floating sign post of course), and some fool throwing out their trash from five thousand meters above our heads. No thank you.
