The Future

Overview: Great Scott! The future! Despite continually failing to live up to its promises of time travel, flying cars, and jet packs, trends clearly show the future's steady and strong growth. Studies indicate that 100% of Americans (and roughly as high a percentage of the global population) remain steadfastly dedicated to embracing and moving toward the future. Why the unwavering devotion to the future, and what does the future's future hold?

The future was first discovered by author and potentially crazy fantasist Jules Verne towards the end of the 19th Century, shortly after the discovery of science.

Prior to Verne's time, most individuals were exclusively concerned with what was known as "the here and now". Largely, this was due to the overwhelming pre-science stresses of "getting into 'heaven'" and not dying of the plague. The age of science did two things: it let people live past the age of 30 for the first time, and it also allowed them to spend more time complaining that they couldn't do certain things, like fly and communicate with God telepathically. Slowly, more and more members of the human race began noticing that every passing day was a day later than the previous day. Many philosophers and mathematicians noted that each coming year was represented as numerically greater by one than the previous year (for instance, 1783 eventually yielded 1784, which led to 1785, etc.)



Above: Rock group ESP demonstrates a completely fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of both the future and music.


There could be no doubt: mankind was slowly but quite surely heading toward the future!


Above: A scientific timeline showing the continued trend toward the future. Important events are listed at bottom "chronologically". Notice that, even before the future was discovered, time would move forward at a steady and consistent rate as historical events played out (CLICK TO ENLARGE!).


When Verne came on to the scene, however, the future really began taking shape, both as a concept and a product. Verne could have been accused of "overselling" the future as, indeed, many of his contemporaries never came to know the marvels he promised, such as submarines, space shuttles, and being able to travel around the world in 80 or fewer days. Of course, today, as we appear to get closer to the future, many of Verne's lofty promises have come to pass! (It is, for instance, no longer impressive to boast that one has circled the globe in 80 days).

If there is one criticism that could justly be applied to Verne, it is certainly that the "future" he so boldly promised has actually turned out to be the present, though one can forgive Verne for not having the foresight to have predicted that the future would still be quite a ways off, even as late as the early 21st Century.














Above: Test your consumer expectations - If you saw a school building with this sign, what assumptions would you make about the nature of the school housed within? Most of those polled assumed the school would be taught by hologram people (89%) and that students would download all knowledge through a wisdom chip implanted into the brain (78%). In fact, this school is actually incredibly similar to "schools of the past", including a high concentration of regular human teachers and apathetic and likely stoned students.

So when the promised future does take place, what can we expect?

Well, believe or not, the market has found there is a fortune to be made out of forecasting what the future will look like when it finally does arrive. Movies like Blade Runner and Minority Report suggest that it will be a lot like Times Square, only bigger and even more unbearable. Both of these futures, it should be noted, were hypothesized by author Philip K. Dick, who was insane.

Movies like Back to Future II seem to suggest a less bleak outlook, envisioning a future filled with hoverboards and highly-advance high-top sneakers.



Above: Ooooooooooooooooooo...future-y!

Still, the market has long agreed that the future will be notable for a number of key features, all of which were established by the popular television series, The Jetsons.



Above: God, when? WHEN?? Hurry up, the future...

This means that we have a handy litmus test for when we have finally reached the future. The key attributes will be as follows:

-All cars will be able to fly, which is largely considered the most significant identifying characteristic of the future.

-All buildings will be built in the sky on poles, kinda like Bespin in Star Wars.

-All citizens will have safe, affordable jet packs.

-All telecommunication will implement monitors. (fig. 53R)


Fig. 53R

-All household items will include antennae.

-Dogs will be able to speak English, though in the barely coherent, mumbly sort of way that you'd imagine a dog would sound like if dogs could talk.

-All household chores will be done by comically outdated notions of artificial intelligence modeled after comically outdated stereotypes of servants.

-All surnames will have evolved to reflect future technology and occupations. Just as the formerly common occupation of blacksmithing during the Middle Ages yielded the common last name "Smith", so too will cog production, jet design, and Space travel, all important occupations of the future, yield last names like Cogswell, Jetson, and Spacely.*

*The actor Kevin Spacey may be a harbinger of the coming futuretimes.

As with all popular trends and products, even the near-universal endorsement of the future has been met with some resistance. A small but growing minority has been vocal about its aversion to the future, and appear quite vigorously intent on promoting living in the past. To some, this can mean promoting a shift in market focus to the living conditions, technological advances, and levels of scientific understanding of the Middle Ages, like Pat Robertson, John Ashcroft, and Tom DeLay.


Above: "Democracy? Basic human rights? Habeas corpus?? Religious FREEDOM??? Yeah, okay Mr. 'Sci-Fi Future Crazy-Town'" -Pat Robertson

For others, it means ignoring the 21st Century altogether, such as in the case of Yankees Fans.

And then there are those who are warning that the entire trend may be a hoax; that, in fact, there may never be a future at all!


Above: Academy Award winner, Nobel laureate, and former President-Elect Al Gore, who's all like "totally not gonna happen" about the future. But I want there to be a future, Al Gore...

Still, it's hard to blame such people for their negative feelings about the future, especially when, in the past, they looked like this:



Above: Sorry, young man, are you lost? Don't you think you're a little too pretty to be a Senator?...

Even some Hollywood filmmakers have bought into the "no future" hypothesis.


Above: "Ahm looking fah Say-ah Cah-nah...."


But while former President Gore may be right about a lot of things (the internet turned out to be a great idea), it's hard to take his data seriously, especially when all market analysis has shown consistent and constant trending towards the future with no signs of a downturn.

Still, one legitimate concern about the future does remain: that of its seemingly long-delayed arrival. For a solid century, conventional wisdom held that the future would arrive sometime on or around the year 2000, as demonstrated in Space: 1999 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Turns out this prediction was way, way off the mark.



Above: You LIED to me, Martin Landau...


In fact, perhaps the only significant technological breakthrough of this short period was The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (for the non-holographic, non-immersive virtual reality videogame system, Nintendo 64), which, while admirably a Players Choice Million Seller and the 1999 Videogame of the Year as awarded by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, was still a far cry from the standard of flying cars, hologram people, robots, and houses on poles.


Above: But, dude, it was still completely awesome.

So the fact remains: we are still anxiously awaiting the future, and there are no (or few) apparent signs of its immediate arrival.

It's safe to say, though, that barring an overwhelming reawakening of nostalgia such as that which briefly took hold of the nation during the run of VH1's "I Love the (INSERT DECADE HERE)" series, its popularity will not subside. Nor will its considerable (and apparently impossible to reverse) influence of the passage of time.


Above: "Coming up NEXT on VH1, Andrew McCarthy hosts 'Remember How Awesome Rubik's Cubes Were?': A retrospective of the life of the Rubik's cube, set to the music of A-Ha and featuring a guest commentary by Q-Bert!!!"


RATING: ***1/2 (out of 4)

BOTTOM LINE: Ask me again sometime.