The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

 I have to admit that sometimes I despair for the future.

The future- once upon a time - was a sort of bright orb "out there" that we were all headed to.  Things were going to get even better.  Technology would provide us with ways to have "computers" that would be tools to enable us to do so much, cars that would fly, ships that would take us to the the stars, and useful side benefits like robots and video phones that would make our lives easier and more pleasant.  

I remember (I was probably 10 or 11 at the time) checking out a book from the library on colonies in space and what they would be like.  The pictures - you know them, the 1960's and 1970's versions of life in space in odd color combinations like avocado and tan and the fashion of polyester fabrics - made the future seem like a very exciting place to be.

The future, however, has turned out to be less bright.

The "computers" that were tools have become the tools we imagined.  They have also become the prison wardens of our existence, chaining us to our desks and work and tracking our every click, word, movement, and shopping pattern, making us little more than economic units to be tracked, subdivided, and monitored.  The cars we have now will not fly; instead, we are actively engaged in creating modes of transport with less mileage, more energy draw, and an even greater threat of toxicity from batteries that we have no real conversation of how we manufacture, recycle, or destroy (The unspoken issues of batteries is the great soft underbelly of the electric car movement that no-one really wishes to discuss, conveniently, as it destroys the narrative of clean energy).

Our ships have turned back from stars:  we can barely consider making it to the moon anymore (something we did 40 years ago) and any discussion around getting to the next planet out, Mars, seems to be a fantastic discussion of what things would be like in the absence of doing anything (Do I think we will get to Mars?  Possibly.  But I suspect we will lose people first. We - literally - have no idea how to push and sustain people in space without resupply from Earth because we have never done it.   We can land robots on Mars.  That is what we can successfully do).  

As to the side benefits - robots and video phones and such - the robots are appearing more and more, with the rather unfortunate side effect of supplanting people in their positions instead of supporting them (Yes, I am cognizant of the fact that new careers are and have been created.  These new careers, however, will never be able to absorb the numbers of low and semi-skilled labor that are being pushed to the side).  And we have our video phones - which more often than not we seldom use for calling but for everything else under the sun and which have become the silent electronic tether similar to the computer mentioned above:  every click, word, movement and shopping pattern stored away for whomever wants to use it.

Add to this the rather new wrinkle (at least here in Western Civilization) of the effective rise and growth of mob rule, where fire, violence and the subtle or actual intimidation of individuals to get one's way are more and more becoming the effective law of the land.  Following on this, of course, will be the effective economic disintegration of these areas of protest as businesses and sane people flee (carefully tracked, of course, by the aforementioned computers) and the resulting hollowing out of urban centers.

You can argue - probably successfully - that I have in some ages reached the Age of the Curmudgeon as so many before me have and so I am seeing only the bleaker parts of the future.  That may be.  But I would at least posit that as a student of history and a lover of sci-fi, I have seen the past (where this sort of thing has happened) and the possible future (where I have seen the "future as a hope" motif fall away to the "future as gritty reality") and I am merely coming back with some rather obvious conclusions.

I would have liked to see the flying cars.