2001 and all that....

We are not quite this retarded technologically but sometimes it feels like it......

The future is here now. Or is it?

Now, on the eve of the advent of 2010 I am wondering again....

I remember as a child spending hours dreaming of technological advances.... And also thinking that the year 2000 was a long way off. It all seems like yesterday......

So now for a few views about how I think our 'tomorrows' are working out so far.

We have certainly advanced a long way in a relatively short time, given that we started off as cavemen hunter gatherers, however many years ago that was.... (How do we know really how long man has existed on this planet we call earth? Archeology? Fossils? And I don't buy into all this evolution malarkey either, but that is slightly off subject and maybe worth a future view or two, at some point)

When I mention advances in technology, I am not too disappointed with Medical breakthroughs that we seem to hear about on a near daily basis nowadays. No advancement in medicine can ever be far enough. Although some of the fields that these advances are appearing in are a little alarming and certainly not above being used for nefarious purposes. Genetics etc.

My major disappointment lies in the fact that, well. It just doesn't seem like the future I imagined as a child.

(The 'internet' has been around since the late 1960s, being made, used and developed by the USA for 'HUSH-HUSH' type business. I personally have been online 20 years, still useless, but am awakening that inner child in me every day more and more by what you can actually do on the old inter-web)

Leonardo Da Vinci had his visions of the future pretty much spot on.

** http://www.leonardo-history.com/

** A pretty comprehensive look at the life and works of this genius. One has to wonder if the man had been alive today what he would have been able to achieve, even though I feel that had Da Vinci travelled forward in time to the 'here and now' he may have been a little disappointed with the future reality....

George Orwell was not far from the actual modern reality with his perceived future in the classic tome ~ '1984' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

"Necessity is the mother of invention...."

Attributed to Plato. Greek Philosopher and author.

Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov were on my childhood sci-fi reading menu too.

Here I could go on and mention the many films, made in the past, that in some way have predicted the future, even swayed the future. But I don't want this to go too far off it's core subject of my disappointment with this existential reality.

I imagined that by the year 2000, everything would be so space-age and uber-modernistic.

Where are the personal self navigating flying cars? Don't get me started on the future of cars here!

And more importantly, where are the Robot or Android type humanoids that I really imagined would be far more prevalent and advanced than they actually are.

So Honda have made the worlds most advanced Robot. It can RUN!! WOOHOO!! wow note the irony. http://asimo.honda.com/ Hardly what I hoped or imagined.

One of the places that the most alarming developments are being made in my opinion, that jeopardizes, not only my current view of the future, but all our futures is Weapons and Warfare. Particularly the Weapons of Mass Destruction. WMD. I am not going to go into the validity of ownership of any of these weapons or the right or wrongs of any war. My views on that subject alone could fill a few more pages...

So. I won't be getting showered or preened by a Robotic-Assistant. I won't be strapping my personal Jet-Pack on and flying to Venus for an hour or two. Nor will I be plugging my brain into a mainframe whilst suspended in suspended animation. Nor will we EVER invent anything that will enable real immortality. I am glad about that.

I am not wishing anyones life away here, but the future just isn't happening quick enough for me. And where the less 'snail-like' IE more pacy, innovations are being made, seem to be in the wrong areas.

So, to finish. This is my disappointing future. 2009. Nearly 2010. The year of our lord, two thousand and ten. Looks better spelt out.

The reality is, that from being a child, the future that I live in now, is different. But hardly futuristic different. The differences now, from then, are that most things are designed by computers, and they have to be made by human beings..... Do you see the point I am making here??

Maybe some of these Technological marvels will appear in 2010??

<(ovo)> xx

Rob. 14/12/09 04.05am Approx.

I really enjoyed writing this.

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