None of us can know, with certainty, what the future will be. We are inescapably rooted in the present moment, unable to foresee what will be minutes or years from now. But we all dream. We speculate. We wonder about what will be. Often our imaginings of possible futures are mundane, just extrapolations of the present we already know. Other times we entertain flights of fancy inspired by authors of speculative fiction, moved to consider the future worlds presented in books and films.
In my experience so far, rarely does the future, as it comes to be, match those wild speculations and imaginings. The unfortunate truth about the future is that it creeps up on us. Inexorably, day by day, it reveals itself to us in tiny increments. The changes are so small that we all too often accept them with barely an acknowledgement. The Future simply becomes the new Present with barely a notice.
But there are moments. Moments when, in the midst of some everyday activity, I am struck by the fact that I am in the Future. Perhaps it is not the one I dreamed of or the one I feared. It’s not the one with the flying cars or devastating plague. These are moments when I look at my Present and think, “I would not have imagined this. How did we get here?”
Welcome to the 21st century
I sat on my couch this morning. Playing softly in the background was something called IDM, Intelligent Dance Music. It is an eclectic mix of synthetic and sampled sounds arranged in hypnotic but intricate rhythms. Nothing like it existed when I was younger. It couldn’t have existed. It requires technology that had not yet been invented.
As I sipped my morning coffee, I was catching up on the latest technology news. And my email. And talking with a cousin 3000 miles away via text messages. And I was recommending independent films to my wife that she could view on her laptop. I did all of that from an 8″ sheet of glass and plastic, an impossibly thin tablet that made me look like a cast member from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Its wireless connection to the Internet put the world at my fingertips – literally.
As I finished my second cup of coffee, my tablet reminded me that I needed to finish my third ebook and send it off to the publisher. Written on technology that didn’t even exist 30 years ago, I would submit it electronically to someone I had never met face to face who would make it available for millions to purchase and download to their own devices. I was working in a medium that didn’t exist 15 years ago that would be sold via outlets that didn’t exist 10 years ago to people who would read it on devices that didn’t exist even 5 years ago. Payment would, of course, be electronic. The money would just appear in my account as sales happened. Ethereal currency in a brave new age.
A jarring realization
As I sat listening to a form of music I could never have imagined, using a device I could never have foreseen, doing things I could never know would be possible, I sent an email to my wife recommending a short film for her to watch on YouTube. I described to her a film set in the “near future.” And I stopped short. Suddenly that phrase had ominous overtones. “The near future.” I was immediately shaken by a realization.
Even 10 years ago, my pleasant morning on this couch could easily have been that short film set in the “near future.” All of the elements were there. The strange device in my hands. The access to vast amounts of data via news feeds. The ability to interact with friends and family in real time via social media sites. Right down to the eerily ethereal, futuristic sounds of the IDM music that streamed to my speakers via an Internet connection and provided an entirely appropriate soundtrack to this Future Moment.
Strange this capacity of being human. To be able to see the Present from our Past selves. To recognize the surprising Future it might have represented if we could only have imagined it back then. Strange to consider that this very Future Moment that I describe here will one day be a pleasant memory from my Past that I can only conceive of from the perspective of my Future self. I wonder what unexpected miracles will have come into my life by then.
“Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.” – Jeffrey Eugenides
Photo Credit
I, Pad – Wayan Vota 2012 from Flickr
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