The Future

Dear Readers,


My wife has been gradually indoctrinating me into the culture of the Blogosphere and such ideas as Tuesday Tidbits, Funny Fridays, Wordless Wednesdays, etc. In the spirit of belonging, I've decided to invent my own feature heretofore known as "Tubby Hubby THursdays." No, I'm not necessarily tubby. Yet. Let's call it future-proofing. And in that spirit I present to you: The Future.

The problem I see with "The Future" as we have long called it, is what I will herein name "the chasm."

No, not a literal chasm by any means. There is an uncrossable technological chasm that stands between us as a race and what we see as The Future. Ironically, this technological chasm is actually human.

Let me explain.

When we use our phones, computers, subways, coffee machines, and what-have-you, they do things for us. Some even do wonderful things. My phone (which by tech standards is not yet a dinosaur, but rather something of an extinct wooly-mammoth) can, at my whim, find me directions to the nearest Vietnamese restaurant, buy me tickets to a movie, bring up the engine-block specifications for a 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo, or amuse me with videos of cats doing decidedly un-catlike things. This, by anyone's standards, is an impressive feat, but it doesn't feel like the future. Why? Because of the expectations injected into my brain by science fiction. I was brought up to think that someday I wouldn't need my phone to give me directions because MY CAR WOULD DRIVE ME THERE AUTOMATICALLY. I was indoctrinated with the thought that someday, some wondrous day, I would be able to speak and my kitchen would cook. That I could make utterance, and my home would illuminate. That I could, with a word, make manifest my smallest whim through some plenipotentiary metallic man-servant. This future is not here.

The nebulous benchmark against which I hold all new technological advancement precludes me from ever considering myself to dwell in this ill-defined future I have concocted. I have set up a standard so high as to necessitate a truly brobdingnagian leap in technology to impress me sufficiently to the point that I could consider myself a denizen of the mythical Future. A phone that can take voice commands is great, and the incremental improvements that trickle out to better these services over time bring us crawling toward our ultimate goal as humans to be able to do many many things while having to ACTUALLY do next to nothing.

Ahh. Progress.

But the unavoidable obstacle standing between us and this Technological Utopia is not necessarily the technology itself, which is always improving and ever-growing. It is in the inherent limitations of man. My phone can give me directions to the nearest Vietnamese restaurant because there was at some point a man or team of mans that, in the machine's native language, instructed it on how to do so. My technology can respond to my desires only insofar as someone, somewhere has anticipated that need (or want, more likely) and set up a range of parameters within which my machine can act to fulfill my wish. My phone can "listen" to me tell it to do something, and if it can do it it will. It's when we step outside of these parameters that the limitations are found. I ask what the weather will be like tomorrow and it tells me. I ask which shirt to wear that day and my phone, desperate to please, shunts me to a Google search of "What shirt should I wear today?" This is not what I wanted.

Now I fully understand the limitations of input from which my phone suffers. It has an internet connection, a camera, and various sensors for motion or orientation, but it is not aware of what is in my closet. At the risk of diluting my original point, I would like to submit that closet-knowingness is not a technology I'm prepared to pay for, but in The Future, every piece of technology would be intertwined creating an ever-present, semi-omniscient being that can readily pick me out a shirt AND THEN IRON IT. You may have noticed I make a small but important distinction between the future and The Future. The one being the inevitable rolling-on of days and years that drags us to a yet-distant Now. The other being this dreamed-of creation of our collective imaginings that includes such ridiculous things as jet-packs, robotic maids, and closets that pick your shirts THEN IRON THEM. I want it known that I do live in the Now, and I love it. But there is a part of me, a small but ever-present part of me, that constantly longs for the technology of The Future. A day when my dinner table will do my dishes for me. A day when my couch will adjust itself to mine and my wife's desired firmness at the same time. A day when I step into and back out of a room that is both in my house and wherever else I want it to be. These leaps made at the same time would force my jaded mind to remit and allow itself the unheard-of indulgence of recognizing itself as residing in "The Future." Until then my phone can get me through the day.

Almost.