Future Part One

 

Well, here it is, 2001, and the world is much the same as it was. I remember a childhood conversation with my mother where I realized both of us would probably be alive in the new millenium. (Even then I understood it started 2001.) I never really thought about what I would be doing for a living, or what the world would be like. The best I can think of from that time is sort of a cross between the Jetsons and Mechanic's Illustrated covers. You know, flying cars, jet packs, personal helicopters, 100 story office buildings, that sort of thing.

Yet someone from the mid sixties would be able to get into one of today's cars and drive it without difficulty. Well, maybe it might take a minute to figure out the windshield wiper controls. Outside the avionics suite, personal aircraft haven't changed much. In fact, many of them at the local airport were probably manufactured then. Office buildings top out somewhere between 30 and 50 stories high, with a few prominent exceptions. And we still drive those cars downtown every workday in a lemming-like rush.

When I was in school I never knew what to write in those "What do you want to do when you grow up" essays. The job I'm doing simply didn't exist then. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. Perhaps the job I was born to do doesn't exist yet.

Where did the future go? Stay tuned for my thoughts on how the future snuck up on us when we weren't looking. next