[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[christycorr]

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

[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.

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

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

[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."

[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.)

[tevere.livejournal.com]

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.)

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

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

[ratcreature]

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

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

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

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

*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.

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[salambander.livejournal.com]

Best. Poll. Ever.

[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.

[roga.livejournal.com]

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

[vampirespider.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I'd rather have teleporters. Teleporters are awesome.

[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. ;-)

[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.

[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.)

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

Two, two! With noodles.


(iow: yeah.)

[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! :-))