[Poll] Is It Tomorrow Yet?

[thefourthvine]

I have been watching All Things Kirk and Spock lately, including some of the original-cast movies. Which means that recently I saw The Wrath of Khan. Now, I've talked before about my history with the pivotal scene in that movie, but to summarize: first time I saw it, in Killa's vid Dante's Prayer, Best Beloved had to narrate the whole thing for me so I knew what was going on, and I didn't get why she was teary. Later, after I came to know Spock through fan fiction, I was the one getting teary. This time? Watching it in the actual movie? COMPLETE MELTDOWN. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and I knew what was coming. But - SPOCK. SPOCK! And then Kirk loses it in an elevator. Oh my GOD.

But that is not my point. (I just can't talk about anything without talking about Spock these days.) My point is that I realized, watching that movie, that it seemed totally reasonable to the makers of it that by 1996 we would have:

• Genetic engineering of complex traits in humans
  
• Long-term cryogenics from which you could reliably be, you know, unfrozen
  
• Prolonged deep space trips featuring (frozen) humans

Those of you who remember 1996 (and if you do, think on this: there are now teenagers whose excuse for not remembering 1996 is that they weren't born yet) will probably also recall that we did not have any of those things then. And, in fact, we don't have them now. And it's not like we're expecting them next year, either.

This, taken in conjunction with a recent post on my friends list, made me think about the future. Are we in it?

(For extra credit, please list your favorite Signs of the Future (either realized or not) in the comments.)

[Poll #1508335]

Comments

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Huh. I am a middle-button girl. Consistently. I suspect that has a lot to do with the SF authors I read most heavily when I was a teenager -- Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Sturgeon. According to the pictures they painted in my mind, we ain't there yet.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was just thinking, all my buttons were top buttons and I wonder if it isn't age-related, not so much the scifi influences, since I read Heinlein too, but I remember black and white tv and when it went off at midnight, replaced by a high pitched tone and a static picture or, later, the waving flag, and I was a teen when we got our first microwave and we were such early adopters of the vcr technology that we bought a beta.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I'm not ashamed to say it: I clicked "Yes" to the reproductive miracle question just so I could feel like I, personally, am a reproductive miracle, although I think non-test-tube reproduction is pretty miraculous already.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

You are a reproductive miracle! (And must especially have been for your parents - IVF is a hard, hard row to hoe.)

Actually, having done the thing where you start out with two cells and end up with an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING, I have to agree: reproduction is always a miracle. IFV is amazing, and micropreemies who survive are amazing, but just babies are amazing. Wow.

[cranberryink.livejournal.com]

Though I watched a LOT of Star Trek growing up, I confess that my vision of the future comes more from The Jetsons. When I have a flying car and I can eat my meals in capsule form, we're in the future.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

The funny part is that I've never seen The Jetsons, and yet I still firmly believe that it isn't the future without a flying car. (Meals in pill form I can live without.)

And possibly you didn't imprint on Star Trek because you didn't want your future to be ENTIRELY RED AND GREY. Not that I am judging the set designers or anything. Not at ALL.

[neery.livejournal.com]

It's not the future until I can cheaply and conveniently access the internet anywhere I want to, so I'd say it'll be the future in about... two years? ;)

I'm going to be very disappointed if we don't get space tourism while I'm still young and healthy enough to go up there, though. I'd also like a car with an environmentally-friendly energy source, and the ability to pick my offspring's gender. Sadly, it doesn't look like teleportation will happen in my lifetime (now that REALLY would be the future).

[reginagiraffe]

the ability to pick my offspring's gender.

This is already technically possible. It is possible to separate Y sperm from X sperm. The beef/milk industry does it now. The beef people want all males (more meat) and the milk people want all females (more milk).

The issue with humans is an ethical one. At this point in time, the prevailing view (among lawmakers and scientists) is that it is unethical to make this choice. (Please note I make no moral judgement myself.)

[christycorr]

Star Trek fic has made me decide that I want replicators more than flying cars. Seriously.

[ratcreature]

Yes, if I got replicators, I'd forgive the lack of flying cars. Maybe even the depressing lack of household robots.

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

I have been getting the feeling in the last two years or so that yes, we are now arriving in the age I had always thought of as "future", both in technological and international politics terms.

My markers:
- the US is in war over resources.
- China is becoming hard to predict in the past year. This is a subject of great worry for me since I cannot predict any more how China is going to develop in the next 30 years. I had thought there was only one way this could go - well - but the possibility of the return of the 20th century model of the earth divided in to blocks is not out of the question any longer. Very scary.
- almost all countries are at least deliberating how to spy on their citizens to make sure they don't commit copyright violations on the internets. Three strikes lays are already on the books in some countries.
- Gmail, Zoho, Flickr - people are starting to save their data to the cloud exclusively.
- Google Wave is being talked about as the future of News Media
- Twitter and how far into normal (not geek) society it reaches.
- google goggles (http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#landmark) (hello, Hitchhiker's)
- touchable holography is being researched (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P1zZAcPuw) (hello, Star Trek)
- gene therapy can, in certain cases, "cure" blindness (http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/15/2015220/Gene-Therapy-Causes-Blind-Woman-To-Grow-New-Fovea).
- the climate crisis is, forgive the pun, heating up, ever since the Stern Report in the UK (hello, reality check I knew was coming since I was an eco-obsessed teenager)
- people (as in, everyone) are becoming aware that there is a need for alternative energy sources because the oil IS going to run out within out lifetimes.
- it's becoming cheaper to store data on ever bigger harddrives rather than burn it onto dvds / other dead storage media. (I'm sure storage on crystals is just around the corner)
- you can now get your genome sequenced, and it's going to become really cheap quite soon, too. http://www.personalgenomes.org/ (hello, Gattaca. >_>)

(Yes, I may be keeping a list of the moments when I get the eerie feeling that the future is already happening. I'm a giant nerd.)

I don't know if you've ever read Otherland by Tad Williams? He has, at the beginning of each chapter, a so called "netfeed", with different news of the day, which sometimes is related to the plot of the book, but mostly just illustrates the ca. 2050 world. Not only can news now be accessed just like the "netfeed" in an RSS reader, much of the content is also slowly happening. No disasters with nano-bots eating our carpets instead of cleaning them yet, no floating-on-the-ocean cities as extensions of real ones yet, but it's been ten years since these books were my one and all and it's fascinating to watch as slowly, our Real World is becoming more and more like the one depicted in Otherland.

No spaceflight or flying cars yet. But! From what I can gather, if we *wanted* to (and public opinion is very much against it, there are studies), cars that drive themselves are not far off. The technology is already getting there.

I for one think the beginning of the future at least is already here.

[tevere.livejournal.com]

the possibility of the return of the 20th century model of the earth divided in to blocks is not out of the question any longer

Oh man, I don't think of this as the future. I think of this as, "Earth's citizens doomed to repeat their worst mistakes. FOREVER."

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

Yes, we've been living in the future for a couple years now. But wait until you see what happens *next*.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I am not sure I want to see what happens next. (Although, obviously, that's preferable to the alternative.) Does it involve something exploding?

[tevere.livejournal.com]

I totally think we're in the future-- I remember reading '2010' as a kid and thinking: we're never going to make it that far! Or, wait-- wasn't there a third in that series? 2061? Maybe 2061 is the future!

(I just googled-- apparently there is also '3001: The Final Odyssey'. Hmm, I guess we're pretty safe from the future in that case.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

3001 is just cheating. OH HAI I CAN ADD A THOUSAND TO ANY NUMBER. *judges the makers of that movie harshly*

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

We are like part way to the future, in some middle ground. It's definitely not the past.

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

Maybe we are pregnant with the future? (Probably we should quit smoking and eat more vegetables, if so.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It ain't the future until I'm fighting a brutal totalitarian space empire from a super-spaceship crewed by people decked out in '70s fashions.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, let it never be the future.

[salambander.livejournal.com]

Best. Poll. Ever.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you! *beams*

[30toseoul.livejournal.com]

I had a moment closely resembling your first poll question over the holidays: being pretty goddamn irritated with my best friend in Montreal when she wouldn't quit texting and video chatting with her idiot boyfriend in Antarctica. It's definitely the future for that category.

[jesse_the_k]

the future is full of multi-coastal idiot boyfriends?

[roga.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, we entered the future in 2007.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Did something specific make it the future? Or was it just, you know, the year itself? *curious*

[illariy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but didn't Star Trek also postulate a third world war sometime in the 1990ies? Or am I confusing the on-screen canon with what was in some compendium. Hm. Anyway, I'm happy we didn't have WWIII yet and can thus forgive the lack of fun robots etc. ;-)

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

According to the Star Trek wiki, Memory Alpha, there are two separate wars being talked about here. World War III (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/World_War_III) is yet in the future according to that (and apparently according to a number of more recent non-TOS episodes); the Eugenics Wars (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Eugenics_Wars), which included Khan, are supposed to have already happened. :-)

(Star Trek geeks, ahoy! :-))

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

This is totally not the future. For one thing, I own and love this t-shirt (http://www.threadless.com/product/63/Damn_Scientists) and I believe every word of it. Secondly, flying cars aside, I have always believed that it's not the future until paper-thin programmable LCD screens are cheap and plentiful. I will believe it is the future when I see an advertisement for someone's garage sale or lost puppy in looping .gif format, tacked to a power pole. I do, however, believe we're very close to it. Give it five years.

I also have this firm idea about going to buy a noodle-based dinner from a street cart in the driving rain, wearing a trenchcoat and dodging lurking weirdos with mechanical body enhancements, but there was probably far too much Blade Runner in my childhood.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

Two, two! With noodles.


(iow: yeah.)

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's the future. America has a black president. Case closed.

(And soon, the alien invasion. I still can't decide if I'll be a collaborator or a steely-eyed rebel. I think the deciding factor is if there's slime.)

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

but which way will the slime make you swing?

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Really, you need to watch Space Seed, the Khan episode, next.

(And could you put me on the Earthling filter?)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I am twitchily waiting for my TOS DVDs to arrive, and then there will be a poll to determine the next episode I watch!

And you are on the earthling filter!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think we're in the future. So many things from early SF are now real parts of our daily lives.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

BUT WHAT OF THE FLYING CAR? Were we not promised a flying car? I think we were!

[the-moonmoth.livejournal.com]

There's a particular genetic trait in my family that has been very destructive and unpleasant. I remember thinking as a kid, 'at least when I'm old enough to have children I'll be able to select that gene out.' I'm now in my mid-twenties and not only have they not developed that kind of Gattaca technology yet, they haven't even identified the gene/gene group that causes the trait. So all in all, I'd have to go with Not The Future. Yet.

[paxluvfelicitas.livejournal.com]

Your hypothetical offspring might still be SOL, but people with genetic diseases that have identified, single-gene causes are definitely within a reproductive lifespan of an easy fix. Google "zinc fingers" - they're a new way of tagging very, very, very specific locations for DNA cleavage, so that you can yank "bad" alleles and copy in "good" ones relatively easily. In about 20 years or so, we're gonna be able to take IVF embryos, alter them, and implant them. And it's gonna work. Whether we will actually be doing that is a whole 'nother question, but the tech is definitely there.

We probably won't be able to order up enchilada babies, though, just because most of the stuff people want to select for - height, weight, eye color, hair color, intelligence, athletic ability, etc. - involves waaaay more than one gene and is not well understood anyway.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

for my part, it's not the future until we have: Faster-than-light space travel, transporter beam technology, colonization of other planets, and yes, uterine replicators...

-bs

[turlough]

Hear, hear!

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I have to admit it's the future now, but I don't WANT this future, I want the future I read about when I was not OLD (THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT OUT), which for me is the middle button.

Your poll options are brilliant, by the way.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

See, I, too, read about the middle-button future when I was wee, but in my case, it prevents me from feeling like this IS the future.

And thank you! I have put a lot of thought into the future. Obviously. *g*

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

I want a tee shirt that says, "We don't have spaceflight until I can get the fuck off this rock."

I feel like I will know it's the future from the clothes. Until I can walk down any city street looking like I'm an extra from The 5th Element without inciting any particular notice, then it is not the future. Sadly, by the time the future happens, I will probably be too old to take advantage of the opportunity. Unless we also get that anti-aging thing down by then.

[aethel]

I second this.

[tobymalfoy.livejournal.com]

I want my jetpack.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Can't help you there, but I'm prepared to sulk with you!

[jadelennox]

I am currently talking to my computer and dictating this comment instead of using my hands. Feels like the future to me. Although I would like the robot wars.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

See, for me, it's only the future if you're talking to your computer and saying, "Computer, teleport me to work." I have an expectations problem, and I blame classic SF.

Although I will say that classic SF taught me one important thing: in the robot wars, everyone loses. *nods self-importantly*

[mtgat]

amilyn and I are always exclaiming: "We live in the FUTURE!" Why? Because I can sit at my couch and watch television that aired in England four hours ago. Because I can sit on my couch and click a couple of keys and argue with a woman in New Zealand in real time about how hot John Barrowman is. Because my kids got one shot and don't have to live through three weeks of miserable itching and scratching like I did when I got the chicken pox. Because I can cook dinner in five minutes in my microwave and despite being mass-produced, it is healthy and tasty. Because my next car is going to run on BATTERIES and a PLUG. :D

I love the future.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

But, but - teleportation! Replicators! The FLYING CAR!

I tell you what: I have inflated expectations. Damn you, SF, for making me think, Chat is great, but if it were the future, I could just BE there.