Endangered Specie: Babies.

So I recently had the pleasure of re-viewing the ever-futuristic Blade Runner which takes place in Los Angeles in the year 2019. The cityscape is bleak and as far as I can tell blanketed by perpetual night. Marketing is pervasive and bright and forms a conspicuously striking contrast to the overly grimy denizens and architecture of the city. The prevailing motif of future-L.A. is black and neon and now that I think about it there isn't a single palm tree to be seen. To add to the misery all the models, movie stars, and marginally attractive humans (minus H.Ford) have apparently rocketed far away from this scene and Earth to the glamorous off-world colonies, presumably quite a ways away (at least as far as Orion) and everyone else is saving up to.
So what happens when we find/make planets that are just way better than Earth and everyone leaves except for the ugly and unsuccessful people? Let's just say that global overpopulation will not be as imminent an issue after the extinction of the erection.
I dunno about you but I'm already starting my off-world transportation fund.

A typical Future Dude,
note the facial scarring
and cheesy facial hair.
He also looks kinda down,
probably due to the
aforementioned extinction.

Speaking of Stephen Hawking, or, Another Funny Video

No blog about The Future is complete without "The Humans are Dead" by Flight of the Conchords.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64

Speaking of Stephen Hawking impressions...remember on Father Ted:

Dougal: It was like that time we put on that variety show and you did that impression of Stephen Hawking.

Ted:He was the last person you'd expect to turn up. That was a million to one shot.

In the future, Father Ted Crilly will be Pope.

Holodex!

As some of our readers may not be total future nerds yet I feel I should hit upon the most important make-believe future tech ever. I'm talking about the Holy Grail of the Geek; I'm talking about the universal definition of "If only"; I'm talking about the Holodeck.

The name may not ring any bells if you've never seen an episode of Star Trek (The Next Generation) but I'll lay it down for you nice and simple like. The holodeck is a room that can reproduce and project almost any environment you could possibly describe to a computer which you can then interact with exactly as if it were reality. Say you want to safari across the vast veldts of ancient Earth Africa, or maybe you want to solve devious crimes in 19th Century England, Baker street, or perhaps you'd want to play poker with Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Stephen Hawking! All is possible with the holodeck!

Although I think they once tried to explain such a ridiculously amazing concept by saying that they used complex "photon manipulation" to achieve the Holodeck but other more actually living people are trying to reproduce the same effects in reality, even today! Of course we are so far from an actual implementation of even a rudimentary holodeck that it isn't even funny. Actually it's really sad because I'll probably die before it happens. Now that I think about it though I'm going to insert a clause for my Will that requires that my ancestry immediately create a holodeck version of me as soon as the technology is available! Of course since every piece of the internet is currently being cached by Google (whether you like it or not), by that time all that will remain for my progeny to use to reconstruct my personality will be Jacob and the Furries videos and witty Facebook profiles. In the future I will live on as a caricature of myself! But any metaphysics philosopher worth his weight in reconfigured photons will agree that that is better than nothin'.

To sum up, in the future we can all have post-humous sex with David Bowie without fear of necrophilia laws or rejection.

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck



A really good example from ST:TNG
Einstein cracks me up every time.

I've Seen the Future, Brother:

"It is murder."

If the great poet Leonard Cohen could pen such a dismal prediction, how, you may ask, are we so optimistic about the future?

Thanks to Nate for sharing this link, which will lead you to an article from FromTheWilderness.com, a website claiming "More original reporting on Peak Oil than any other site on the net." The article, "An Important Announcement" by Michael C. Ruppert, asserts that there is, in fact, no "Plan B," addressing specifically the issues of oil and energy. (Be prepared for "Some Dots," an alarming list of evidence to support his topic.)

True, there is no Plan B. Clearly, biofuel, etc. won't suddenly solve problems. There are smart scientists, yes, but they can't fix anything, just innovate and improvise. We've done some real irreversible damage. My purpose in this entry, however, is not to discuss, however true, the idea that "Nature does not grant time outs," a wise statement made in the article by Mr. Ruppert. There will be more on future environmental issues in a future post. No pun intended.

"The victim has been the future," says the article, and I will agree that the victim still is the future. Literally speaking, the phrase, "The victim is the future" is very serious. Structurally and grammatically speaking, one finds it quite interesting as well. One way of analyzing it is to imagine the future as a real victim, cowering and taken complete advantage of. Another is to realize that what we are doing now does not affect us now, but it will. Basically, we can see the future as an object in itself, something we can save, or just as an idea, vague and distant. Which will affect how we act more?

Something they say in Ireland is "I'm just after [present participle]," and I've been lately considering this linguistic phenomenon as a way to perceive everything we do: that everything we do affects us. "I'm just after talking to my mom" or "I'm just after getting my exam results" both affect us. It's like saying, "This is me after doing something that has clearly changed my life." For example,

"We're just after using up all the oil." But Then What?

I can't (yet) propose any ideas for alternative energy sources. I am simply trying now to prove why the future is something to be optimistic about. Over the summer I read a book by James Martin called "The Meaning of the 21st Century." I don't agree with all of it, and you won't either, and the book's attempt to cover nearly every vital issue results obviously in a lack of details, but the book provided me with a surprisingly optimistic outlook at how things could be if we started doing things right as soon as we can (now). Maybe I just liked it because it was enlightening and educational but also made me feel warm and good, like listening to NPR. It was the first book of its kind I'd read, and I read it not as a manual of problems and solutions but simply a broad collection of possibilities. It empowered me more with information than it did monger doom.

I do declare that the future is awesome. We as a generation are creative, bright, and passionate. That's not to say we're too smart to do something stupid. But change is possible. It doesn't mean waiting for government regulations or big corporations to change policies in order to effect some sort of change. At last count, there were over 6.5 billion individuals. (More on population later.) Maybe the best option now is to do the best you can and encourage others to as well.

"The victim has been the future" but the future is not murder. At least, it doesn't have to be.

Two Words

Beard Implants.

Lame present Technology