thefourthvine | [Poll] Is It Tomorrow Yet?

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]

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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.

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."

Good point. I'll just be standing here like Rumpelstilzchen, stamping my foot and yelling I don't wanna go in this direction! We've been there! We should have overcome this! This is stupid and inefficient! Get over yourselves! Let's all be friends and work together on terraforming Mars now, 'cause if we don't start right now we won't be able to move there in 500 years! No? Oh alright, see how your descendents will suffer because you couldn't think globally enough, then.

Wait-- I got it. It's not the future unless we have a global parliament, run by the United States!

(I find myself completely undecided as to whether the UN fits this definition or not. I think -- for the time being -- not.)

*facepalms* Right. And no, I think the UN is doomed to remain an insignificant ideal of dreamers like me for a long, long time. Until they turn into Firefly 'Verse's GovCentral and become the baddies, I suppose.

no floating-on-the-ocean cities as extensions of real ones yet

No, we're not quite there, but I think it might be in Dubai where they're building out onto the ocean, creating "land" where there was none before. It's only a matter of time.

I think my problem is that I tend to think that it isn't the future until things are definitively better than they've been in the past. So a lot of your markers I consider to be steps AWAY from the future.

I haven't read Otherland, but I am so adding that to my wishlist.

And we're very close to cars that drive themselves - we're inching ever closer, with the various anti-collision systems that take over braking and so on. And, frankly, I cannot wait, and shake my fist at people who don't want it. (I live in Los Angeles. This probably influences my enthusiasm for this concept.)

[Poll] Is It Tomorrow Yet?

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