Ellington

Fun piece in (on?) Salon today lamenting the lack of a truly futuristic future here in what is now the present. (You follow?) People who know me know that I'm saying this stuff all the time. I really expected more future to be here once we got into the 2000s; it's nearly halfway through 2007, dammit, and we haven't found a single monolith, much less began planning a rescue mission to Jupiter in order to save the first Jupiter mission that went awry in 2001. (In Buck Rogers, when I was a kid, the "last of the deep-space probes" actually left Earth in 1987.)

We do have some futuristic things, many of them creeping up on us slowly enough that we don't realize how crazy-significant they are unless we sit down in the WayBack Machine and try to think of life in, say, the 1980s. (Yeah, I know, there's conceivably some of you out there who actually weren't even born in the 80s. Perish the thought.) The writer makes the point that these innovations seem "micro" compared to the "macro" possibilities of, say, a moon colony or space elevator or high-speed trains under the ocean.

Micro, actual-future-now innovations include:

* Mobile "communicators." We've got those, and phones +e-mail +world-knowledge-devices in your pocket (if not on your watch) are certainly futuristic if you think back to what they once were.

* Robot vacuum cleaners. I know...whatever. But that's the way the future *actually* works. You get a half-assed Roomba instead of a Rosie-the-Robot and you forget that we used to not have half-assed Roombas.

* Table-top pre-press machines. They're called "Macs" and we use them in the office all the time, doing quite a bit of the layout that used to require huge rooms and huge staffs that no longer work at commercial printers or pre-press shops.

* Digital paper. Answering the eternal question -- How can you take a website into the bathroom with you? It's gonna happen.

* Electronic voting machines. (Oh, wait...those suck. Sorry, forgot for a moment.)

* GPS. Kinda cool, kinda Orwellian. Which is the trend, anyway, right?

* Wash and wear khakis. They're pretty close on this one.

* Plug-in air fresheners. C'mon...that proves we're smack-dab in the future, don't it?

What am I missing?

Previous Comments

ID

112816

Comment

Todd, I've been asking myself the same question about those missing jet packs. I was in elementary school in the 80's, and I remember reading in a textbook about how we would have jet packs and floating cars by now. However, at that time, I also recall running across a book that was published in the late 50's that had an illustration of what 1987 was going to be like, and it looked like something out of the Jetsons. I thought to myself, "Hey, it doesn't look like that at all now!" On the other hand, we do have a lot of innovations available to us now that I do appreciate, like blogging. :-)

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2007-05-12T19:43:35-06:00

ID

112817

Comment

In the book I'm writing about blogging I just got to a section where I talk about making money from your blog...it's interesting to think that even then notion of a "professional blogger" a few years ago was completely pre-thinkable, and now it's a dream for some on par with an American Idol gig or being a film director.

Author

Todd Stauffer

Date

2007-05-14T10:13:15-06:00

ID

112818

Comment

Ernie from EHOWA (not for all eyes) is a classic example of someone who's made it big just writing stuff, and linking to other content. The founder of FARK.com just wanted a place to host that picture of the squirrel with the big nuts for his friends to see. Now, he make hundreds of thousands of dollars, has a book coming out, and gets paid to drink beer and go on radio shows! However, before you hire a professional blogger you better read their blogs or else you may end up like the Edwards campaign, and hire a blogger who may not fit the image you are trying to project in your blog.

Author

pikersam

Date

2007-05-14T11:00:43-06:00