2000 was supposed to be the future & 2010 was supposed to be amazing. All the sci-fi books & movies said that by now we were supposed to be living in a technological mecca filled with clean cities & flying cars & robot servants that do all the mundane tasks for us like cleaning.
No, I don’t mean the Roomba.
Here we are, 2011, we’re living in the future! The time is now! All those promises of a better brighter future that were promised by the likes of Heinlein & Asimov are upon us!
I’m totally not seeing it, nor am I seeing anything that could be the ushering in of it.
I think we could be closer to the utopia envisioned by many, but I don’t think that we’re totally ready for it. We, as a whole, seem to be too focused on instant gratification to perceive the big, long term picture. The most feature-packed phone, the fastest computer, the newest video game that lets us dismember virtual people, the next big blockbuster that lets us watch people dismembering other people. The focus seems to be too much on entertainment of the masses & not advancement of the race. It’s a consumer-driven market, so the majority of the companies are just giving us what we seem to want, & we want toys.
And what if we did get that future? Overnight & immediately? Would we be able to handle it?
I can control the media PC that I have connected to my TV & stereo from my smartphone. This blows people’s minds. I deal w/people on a regular basis that can’t figure out how to use a phone. Not a smartphone or a cell phone, like a normal house phone. We all encounter individuals that can’t guide their vehicles along the ground, let alone add the additional confusion of altitude.
I’m not saying people are stupid, I’m saying that as a society we’ve become dumbed-down. Everything is made with ease-of-use foremost & we have our hands held thru tasks that should be mundane & run-of-the-mill. The ability to think for ourselves has be replaced w/instant opinion insertion from the internet & television. The ability to reason thru things replaced w/brightly colored labels & flashy icons. Life has become a video game walkthrough.
Combine this over-simplification of everything along with the complications involved with learning new technology & a large majority of people will give up without even trying. I know people that still refuse to use a computer because they don’t understand them & don’t want to. On the other hand, I know people that aren’t super tech geeks that are proficient enough to get done what they want to get done with one because they took the time to figure it out.
I’m not innocent of any of this by a long shot. I’m taking a break from brutally maiming people on the Xbox to post this. Yesterday I had issues trying to do something as simple as mailing a package because I’ve never mailed a package on my own before. I’m just as guilty of coming to rely on the hand-holding & lusting after new toys as anyone. Hell, moreso than some.
To boil it down & put it in a nutshell, I guess what I’m really trying to say is that next time we ask where our flying cars are, we should take a look in the mirror for the answer.