Living in the Future
I happened to catch the end of “Back to the Future” the other night while waiting on whatever was coming on next and it got me to thinking about the future… which is a little strange, since the movie set in the distant unimaginable year of… 2015.
Yes, folks, that’s how old we are — movies set in the future are now in our past. I remember a lot of movies from my childhood set in the (at the time) far-flung days of 1999. Now here we are on the cusp of 2022, and not a flying car or hoverboard to be seen.
A while back, I saw a tweet someone had shared that said, “I just asked my girlfriend if I could unplug her book from the charger so I could charge my cigarette… The future is weird.” Yet, here we are, living in a world where all of the world’s information is on a device smaller than a ham sandwich, where cars can park themselves and I have to prove I’m not a robot to reset my email password. I’m in my late-40s, so I’ve grown up with technology. In the 6th grade, I was one of a handful of students chosen to be a part of the first ever “Computer” class at Marion.
About 20 of us were assigned to sit in front of Apple II-E consoles (black screen with green type) and explore such amazing programs as “virtual lemonade stand” and “typing wizard” and my favorite, a text-only adventure game called “Zork.” Some of you might remember having to type “Kill the troll with the sword” to keep from being eaten alive. It sounds weird, I know, but imagine in 50 years our kids trying to explain to their grandchildren what a “TikTok” is.
