BeholD the Future

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I might be, but I'm a little forgetful. I forget to make them, and then I forget what they were anyway. Perhaps the fact that I don't make such resolutions could be taken in some way as proof of the fact that I am essentially a happy chap. Happy enough not to require a resolution to change my life in any significant way. Or maybe not having a list of resolutions shows instead that I am lazy. It's difficult to tell. Looking ahead at 2007, I find myself amazed that we're here already.

When I was a young boy reading books about the future, complete with brightly colored illustrations, 'the future' was the year 2000. In the year 2000, the world was going to be an entirely different place filled with technologies far beyond that which surrounded me in my day-to-day life of the early 90s. It wasn't going to be 'Buck Rogers in the 25th century' or 'Star Trek', but it might just be somewhere between that and 'Space 1999' where humanity was already zipping around space interacting with funny ladies that could change into birds and other animals in a puff of cosmic magic. Back then from my animal wallpapered bedroom with my mono record player and FM radio on which I could often hear the music of Backstreet boys and all those boy bands the future, as close as it might have been, was still a long way off. I had read in a book then that the world maybe too ahead that a flashing mouse on the screen may not be recognized as “Mickey mouse”.

Cars would no longer have wheels. Instead they would float about a foot or so off the ground and whiz around almost silently. This seemed entirely possible as Luke Skywalker's dad had an old one of those cars in the recent film Star Wars. In 'the future' we would all work less, as things called computers would take on mundane tasks allowing us more time to enjoy the world and each other. Robots would replace waiters, shop assistants, and school dinner ladies. Evidence of these great leaps forward weren't hard to find either. The task of watering the garden could now be performed by sprinklers and cars were already beginning to be built by machines with giant robotic arms, freeing the men who used to have those jobs to spend more time with their families, who must surely be happier now that dad no longer has to go to work. At the time I quietly hoped that dad's job back home might be taken by a robot soon too. That way we would see more of him than the brief moment where he said goodbye in the morning and goodnight in the dusk. And here we are, 2007. Seven years after the “millennium”.

The floating cars, the inter-orbital flights, they never "arrived. But we do have the internet, and the ability to have face to face conversations with people all over the world. Heck, it might even be argued that some shop assistants have indeed been replaced by robots that are yet to be programmed with emotion and humor. But all in all, the future still seems a long way off. While there are some gloomy prospects on the near horizon what with Iraq, climate change, and other such concerns, I think maybe as this new year begins, I might just go out and find myself a children's book about 'the future'. A book full hope, excitement and brightly colored illustrations of the years ahead. Something to remind my adult self of the wonder that sometimes escapes us all as we grow older and more based in the reality of our today’s rather than the fantasies of those tomorrows we can't yet see.