The Future

Trying to guess all the developments which will manifest themselves in one-hundred is an essentially impossible task. Think about just ten years ago. Back then, could we hardly imagine all the advances that have been made? The iPhone, the iPad, the touch-screen, the motion-gaming, Google Earth, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, the birth and death of Myspace. All that has happened in the past ten years has thoroughly revolutionized the way we live. Facebook makes us more connected and distracted than ever, and if one looks at the so-called "Arab-Spring", these social networking sites have served as catalysts for social change, overthrowing dictatorships. For nearly everyone of us has internet access in their pocket, allowing us to post videos and pictures instantly online. To us, this is normal, quotidian, utterly prosaic, but I would say to ourselves just ten years ago, this would be frightening.

Because despite how much fun we have with this technology, it is irrefutably intrusive. No matter how hard we try, we cannot manage to escape the grasp of a screen. From the moment we wake up, until the very moment we close our eyes, we are entirely preoccupied by all that is online. We look at our friends statuses, and their pictures, and their music, and their thoughts, and ideas. And while we are doing this, they are doing the same to us. Privacy is dead. We can never be alone. And it seems Donne was right, for today, more than ever, no man is an island.

Thus, if it wasn't for the subtle incremental change from 2002 to 2012, very few if any of us would accept the current under which we live today. The change would be drastic, too utterly frightening.

Therefore, if I must predict what life will be like in a hundred years, a period ten-times exponentially greater than the change we have seen in a decade, I must wager that it will be a nightmare.

People will walk around with computer chips in their brains. We will have constant access to the internet. Every single one of us will be submerged in a world of augmented reality, such that everything we look at will be covered in a web of internet like information. Everyone of our thoughts will be automatically up-loaded to a pseudo-social networking site called MindNet, such that all of our friends, family, co-workers, and government officials will know precisely what we are doing. None of us will have to attend school, rather, we will just have to plug ourselves up to a nano-USB drive to download all which is required of us. The world population will be 20-billion. Whenever our bodies get too sick and tired to continue living, we will just download our entire brains on a computer so none of us will have to truly die. So we won't be scared of anything, except perhaps slipping and falling and ruining our brains. We will never have wars. For we will not be able to love our countries. For we won't be able to love anyone. Child-bearing will be deemed too misogynistic, so children will be grown in factories and raised like cattle in large factories. We will all vote. And believe in democracies. As will our politicians who will be robots manufactured in mass by GM. Social-issues will be important because none of us will want these robots making their own decisions about their hardware and software and we will all go to church every other Wednesday where we will ride carnival rides and bowl and hit golf-balls because those are the activities which ultimately build the character which is necessary for a human mind to live on a microchip.

I really hope this doesn't happen.