Have you ever thought about the future?

I've always been a lover of science fiction, partly because of the insane gadgetry and the awesome action sequences, but mostly because of the futures this genre creates. I wonder if we really will have hover cars and jet packs, a host of alien creatures living along side with us, and hotels in different galaxies in our future.






Will our future be post-apocalyptic and survivalist like The Road, Mad Max, The Stand?

Or will it be techno-junkie galactic industrial like Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Total Recall?

Or, perhaps, will our future be the same? Will we remain stagnant and unchanging?

And all of this wondering about our future made me wonder about the futures of past generations. Is this, now, what they had planned for their futures? Do we disappoint with our lack of hover cars and alien friends? Or were they able to come to grips with a pragmatic evolution of their society rather than an idealistic one?

Interestingly enough, here's an illustration of what past generations thought the 50's would look like:

Four levels of city? That sounds pretty awesome to me, but, as we all know, it never happened. It still hasn't happened. So what does this mean? Clearly, our foresight needs some work, right? The truth is that society evolves gradually, slowly towards the future. We may never have a hover car in my generation, or the one following, or the generation after that, or so on and so forth. But that shouldn't stop the science fiction future, or even invalidate it. Because maybe we will be eating McDonald's in outer space with our giant alien friends one day. Who knows? That's the great thing about the future. No one has the ability to predict what's going to happen, and that gives us the greatest creative freedom. Time gives us the luxury to construct glorious futures, exciting, other-worldly futures.

And these what-if futures might just be the best thing about our future.

Who knows, really?

-M