The FUTURE is now

For the longest time, the future to me was always something that came in a single bundled package. It was a place that I would arrive at. And once there I would suddenly have access to all of the things that the future held. The technology, the idealism, you know…Star Trek.

Star Trek has always projected a positive outlook for the future. With its advanced means of transportation (spaceships) and advanced medicine (devices that gave every vital sign needed to diagnose your ills…in a hand held format) and extremely high-tech toys (the holodeck) it was just the place that I always wanted to live in.

Oh, I knew the state of technology in the present was quite removed from the things I saw on the show. But I also knew that the creators and writers of Star Trek made efforts to use a lot of speculative science that wasn’t always that hard to believe. After all, just because we don’t know how to make a phaser today, doesn’t mean that in the future, with advances in lasers and other technologies we wouldn’t be able to figure it out. And THAT was the thing that excited me! What the future will have in store for me! Wow! I couldn’t wait to get there!!

Eventually it occurred to me that the future wasn’t getting here as soon as I hoped. And in thinking about that, it also became apparent that one of the reasons why was that I was traveling to that future by living through the present day by day. Hour by Hour. Minute by minute. I was traveling forward in time, to be sure, but at the same rate as everyone and everything else. A 1:1 ratio if you will. And as a result of this mode of time travel, the inventions I learned of that were pushing the technological edge were not the earth-shattering, time accelerating things that I had always wanted them to be. They were new and they were advanced, but they weren’t the holodeck in my living room that I wanted.

The fact is, these advances were things that I was acclimating to as they happened, and as a result, they became comfortable to me. Like people that experienced the automobile replacing the horse and buggy as the main means of transportation. Sure, there was some resistance and skepticism to it. People never really thought that a car would replace a horse…until they got one themselves and experienced the benefits first hand. The fact that they no longer had to deal with a living animal to transport themselves and their family became such a positive thing, that the negatives were often overlooked. They were completely ignored in many cases. When the dangers of driving a car on the open road were identified, we simply made adjustments to certain things and overcame them. We created a set of rules that all drivers have to abide by. We created better and safer vehicles…and most importantly we adapted to these changes.

Such is the way of the future. It is not ushered in with a flash of the technological magic wand, but with the slow, steady development of new thoughts, new innovations. Ideas that would never have happened, had the changes of the past never happened. After all, would we really need airbags if we were still traveling in a horse drawn carriage?

As these thoughts coalesce in my mind and I sit here wanting the holodeck to be invented, I realize that I am just going to have to wait. One day at a time. Minute by minute. But that’s ok. I know it’s out there. Someday I will wake up and KNOW that the future has arrived.

I just wish it would hurry up!