Future Expectations

We have our movies and our books filled with technology so advanced, it looks like magic.  We have our theories about government and culture.  We have creativity—but what are people actually expecting?  Additionally, what do they want?

Kelly Maher, who hopes to become a filmmaker after she graduates from college, remarks on the importance of physical activity.

Kelly: I guess it would be nice to see kids care about exercising instead of being forced into it in gym because it’s required so you have to.  Or we’re just going to make you run a mile because we have to.  Because maybe if we could make kids care about it more, they would want to go out and play again and play with each other, get all those social skills that maybe we’ve been losing over the years.

Her friend, Jen Cave, who was present at the time, enthusiastically added a few activities she’d like to see enforced.

Jen: I want to try archery!  Yeah, actually, that’s something I want to see is archery….I want to see that become a bigger thing.  Like you could do it at college.  They could have an archery team or something.  That would be cool.

As it is, physical activity is making a slow transition from outdoors and actual to indoors and virtual.  The invention of the Wii brought about a whole wave of simulated athletics from tennis to boxing.  Are more diverse and interesting activities, such as archery, a way to get kids out…or will we just end up digitizing everything?

The impact of technology on culture is a long-standing fear.  From the “Big Brother” of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to the hostile robot network of the movie I, Robot, humankind exemplifies this particular fear.  Unsurprisingly, it was mentioned when I asked about thoughts on the future.

Photographer Alex Clarke, who is never seen anywhere without his camera-enabled smart phone, was the first one to specifically mention the rise of technology and its potentially devastating impact.

Alex: One thing I do see possibly happening is humankind being consumed by technology.  And just like, right now, how technology is improving itself constantly and it’s getting more involved in people’s lives and it just seems like everyday people are always looking at their smart phones and always having to check facebook, instagram, tumblr—every single little application to be up to date with their friend when, in real life, they’ve really got nothing to say other than to comment what happened on facebook or on tumblr.

I see us possibly—see technology being integrated into the human body.  That’s something I find very scary because it just seems like it’s becoming more and more important in our daily lives.  And what I would hope to see is that it doesn’t become like that and that we slow down on that and start to realize what’s going on and, maybe, instead of get ahead of ourselves with technology, but more slowed down and kind of realize what’s happening and get more into social in real life instead of, say, a mobile device.

We’re in a constant balance between the furthering of technology and the fear of it.  Although, this fear isn’t of technology itself, just the social and cultural ramifications.  Will we become more solitary?  Will we rely on fake friends?  Will we end up as fat and lazy and dependent as the crew aboard the spaceship from the animated movie Wall-E?  Those things are what we are afraid of.  We celebrate the technology itself.

iPods and iPhones and tablets were all met with breakout reactions.  “That’s cool,” people said.  “I want one.”  We’re always looking for the next big thing.  One person I interviewed in particular, Rosalie Bolender, had perhaps the most to say on this subject.  An avid lover of both art and science, Rosalie needed little cue to startup a good long list of what she’d like to see and its likeliness of occurring in the next fifty years.

Rose: Well, in about three years, there better be a hoverboard or two because 2015 and I need a hoverboard, but in realistic terms, I think hoverboards are possible, probably within the next fifty years.  I don’t know.  It’s like…I read somewhere that they have, like, electromagnetic things that can sort of simulate hovering and I know they have the magnetic trains that literally hover off the rails, so I mean, hovering itself is possible.  It’s just not open to the public for individual use.  So I’d like to see some of that.  That’d be cool.

Also, I mean, everyone’s going to say flying cars, but, like, personalized flying machines.  Probably not in the next fifty years, but still, I’d like to see it.  But it’s probably not possible.  And if it was, it’d probably be a billion, trillion dollars more expensive than it should be.  Anyways, um, what else?

I think…skyways are probably gonna happen.  Maybe.  I don’t know.  It’ll be a while.

Q: What’s a skyway?

Rose: Like a highway in the sky.

Q: But we don’t have flying cars.

Rose: Well, I mean personalized flying machines as in without a car, but I think it they made cars fly it would be pretty cool.  Although, I don’t really think they would let just anyone fly a car.  Because if you think about it, if you’re driving a car, you’re basically on a two-dimensional plane.  You have forwards, backwards, left, and right, and then all the diagonals.  But you literally can’t move up or down.  When you’re in a car that flies, um, that’s three dimensions.  That’s like every direction known to man is now possible.  And if you think about all the drunk driving accidents and junk, it’s like, are they really going to let just anyone fly a car?  It takes years to get a license to fly a plane, not even for commercial use.  It’s not an easy thing to do, so probably not flying cars.

There’ll probably be a ton of advances in medicine, though.  The life-span will probably expand.

Virtual reality.  That would be a cool thing.  Like, if they had videogames—like, I mean, yeah, we have the Wii, where you can move things on a screen, but if they created some sort of helmet where you wear it and you literally believe you are in the game.  If they created some sort of room with screens all around and you could create holograms in three dimensions.  That would be amazing.  That would be a great experience.

Or, like, interactive television, maybe?  I don’t know.  Something like that.  I think that would be cool.

It sounds like everyone has a combination of big hopes and big concerns regarding the next fifty years.  Hoverboards and flying cars were the most frequently mentioned innovations.  (Back to the Future II has probably created a heavy influence in this area.  What we didn’t succeed in already, we’re still looking forward to.)  The frequent apocalypse scares humankind is so fond of, surprisingly, were not mentioned.  While it’s fun to see in fictional media, it seems there’s a widespread doubt of it actually occurring.  In any case, it sounds like we’re in for quite the ride (hover-enabled or not.)