Looking to the Future
This novel certainly gets us to consider what life in the future might be like. Think about cars, schools, homes and all the other features of life and predict what they might be like in the future.
In this strand, consider one element in your life and what it might be like in the future. For example, think of entertainment. How might that be very different in the near future?
Have fun with this category and come up with some interesting ideas.
In this strand, consider one element in your life and what it might be like in the future. For example, think of entertainment. How might that be very different in the near future?
Have fun with this category and come up with some interesting ideas.
posted by Brady Kelso @ 9:31 AM
9 Comments:
At 7:05 PM,
cacerola said…
I personally believe that if politicians don't get their heads out of their (you know wheres), then the world is eventually going to enter into a nuclear war or some other thing that destroys civilization as we know it.
However, if by some miracle, politicians can swallow their egos long enough to sort out their differences, humanity can finally start making progress on key issues like world hunger and the abolition of poverty.
Aside from that note, there are various other aspects of everyday life that will drastically change. America's need for machines that will excercise for them will eventually become a multi-billion dollar industry as all the butterballs of today turn into the Schwarzennegers of tommorow. I also firmly believe that people will become exponentially more detached from the world around them. We can see traces of this in the fact that when you walk down the street, you see more people listening to music on their iPods and talking to their friends or business associates than the people who actually take time to enjoy their walk. Also, as laziness is vastly becoming part of our culture, we will eventually use our legs only in extreme duress or when doing 'ancient' sports such as track and field, ice skating, wrestling, lacrosse, soccer, and football. Even then, the future will have so many gadgets that your overall results increase tenfold.
However, the developements in science and technology will be absolutely staggering by todays standards. Think about the advances that we've made in the past 20 years alone. It is my firm belief that we will somehow find a way to make Mars habitable and migrate half of the world's population over there.
On a lighter note, we won't have any homework as it can all be implanted in a chip but as a result, children will no longer be subjected to this joy we call 'childhood' or 'adolescence'. We will also have at least two people that will try to take over the world and or galaxy through the use of force. After being successful with half of the world, the other half will unite to bring the dictator down (at the expense of thousands of robot lives.)
On the subject of robots, I believe that they will have a large representation in our lives and the threat of hacking and computer viruses will be the meanest thing on the 'axis of evil' alongside free thinkers and benevolent aliens. Not to mention the crime rate which will be up 10% from what it is today.
However, this is just my perspective on how we will turn out if we continue on the way we are going. Of course, we could always have a utopian society in which everyone lives a blissful, happy life free of the burdens of thought or free expression. Everyone will have loads of fun just basking in the perfectly warm 75 degree weather and picturesque Roman columns. No, for me the future must be real and have something to live and fight for.
The future of the future is that we realize that there is infinite knowledge and infinite experiences. In the future, we will all have good lives filled with convienences such as mini spaceshuttles for inter-planetary travel and roomy teleportation devices for those days that we are in a hurry. However, as long as there are people who can see how the world can be improved without completely destroying the culture and earth that we came from, there is still hope. Hope is the one thing that defines all of our futures. It is what will push us forward and will keep us from reaching total despair. Because, after all, if it weren't for hope the world would collapse upon itself and all would be heroes would die before they could save the universe and all it's parallels. Therefore, it is my hope that in the future, we come to recognize that the struggles that we experience today are there not to be eliminated completely but to be dealt with and used to make a better humanity, one that doesn't shirk away from difficulties and responsibilities and one that doesn't look away and rationalize when something goes wrong. Humanity will evolve. Everything always does.
At 5:56 PM,
Armin Samii said…
In the near future, I can see iPods and other music players having better capabilities, such as built in TV's...and stuff like that. And they'd be more shiny.
Camera's would be really tiny, like the ones in Spy Kids.
Oooh, and you would be able to take a picture with your iPod. That would be something.
At 6:23 PM,
dude said…
I'll have to agree with d. fiend on the topic of gaming. I believe that in the future, all one will have to do is put on a pair of glasses, and whalla, 3-D virtual reality gaming. I also belive that your TV will be right in the middle of the room and you could just walk right trough it without any disruption. Furthermore, I believe that iPods will be able to hold Terabytes of memory, and you can transfer an entire computer full of files into your USB. Finally, I think that one will be able to acces iTunes on one's iPod and download the songs from there. Oh yeah, songs will cost $2.99 or more.
At 7:27 PM,
Armin Samii said…
I agree with Nishita's first post on more portable laptops and textbooks on CD's. The textbooks on CD's seems very realistic because instead of paying all that money and killing all those trees for a textbook, you pop in the CD to the portable laptop.
Andy said that evolution will lead to flying pigs. I sure hope so!
(but flying bunnies would be better)
Adding onto Nishita's post, I think regular books may even be on CD's because tree huggers will take over the world and stop books from being on paper.
Continuing to add on to Nishita's post, school would not only be more demanding, but possibly even taught completely online, as some colleges do currently.
Bear in mind that Nishita's ideas are much more likely to happen in the near future, within 10 years. My ideas will take much longer because schools and books have been around for centuries and it will take time to efface.
And Chris, nukes are bad. Maybe they will go away completely and be replaced with laughing gas! That would be the best WMD.
At 5:35 PM,
cacerola said…
I have a question. Why is it that everyone always assumes that computers and robots will be cold, calculating things that are either a)planning to take over the world or b)something that exists solely to make our life easier? Doesn't anyone think that there will be any sort of artificial intelligence that eventually evolves into a reproducing species in its own right? We could live peacefully with robots (think of Rosie from the Jetsons). However, this is highly unlikely seeing as humans have a tendency to get jealous and to fear anything that is different.
Also, with the advance of genetic engineering, I find it highly likely that governments of the far future will experiment with creating a 'ultimate killing machine' Obviously this will cause big problems and it should be something to consider when talking about the future. No doubt we might actually get Dr. Frankensteins in the future who become horrified by what they have done. We even have some today (from the Manhattan Project).
At 8:45 PM,
cacerola said…
So you think that it's okay not to try and change? It took us (America) a long while to accept the fact that there were different races and that they were equal, but we did. If robots were ever to develop thought processes that allowed them to think outside thier programming then we would struggle to accept that. The war would probably be bloody and I don't think I can even guess what the outcome would be. However, we would eventually have to come to terms with that and make an attempt at peace, assuming we hadn't completely screwed ourselves over by then. Hopefully then we could live in at least a somewhat peaceful coexistance.
Besides, I've always woken up from my nightmares. Why can't our fears and unacceptance be similar?
At 8:53 PM,
cacerola said…
I totally agree with you Annu. Our nation in general is becoming too lazy concerning our physical health. Some people do join sports to lose weight. However, the ones that stick to it do so because they like the feeling that sports give them. Sports give you the feeling that you worked hard for something and accomplished it. (Thus the saying, 'Through sweat, blood, and tears') I also think that sports in the future might have a problem because people will be fit without trying and will thus have a problem working through the pain that can sometimes be associated with pushing yourself too hard, learning a new technique and failing, and just accepting the fact that you can only get out of something what you put into it. More and more people these days expect to do well at something with only mediocre efforts. This will probably be more prevailent in society later and will be the cause of some problems in the future.
At 8:55 PM,
cacerola said…
Oh, I'm sorry. I'll try and make this one short.
Whatever happened to jingles? I miss them. The goldfish ones got replaced by stupid animated fish and now all commercials are like mini stories or some sort of 'sex' appeal (including car commercials. 'Buy this car and girls will love you.' Although I like the Mitsubishi ones...) And the new McDonald's one? Sad! Whatever happened to, 'We love to see you smile'? I liked that one. In short, I miss catchy tunes that had you humming the product's advertising for days.
At 10:25 PM,
cacerola said…
I'd actually like to make a point about clothes and the developement of such in general.
**CAUTION: NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART, EASILY ANGERED, SHELTERED CHILDREN, THOSE WITH HEART PROBLEMS, AND PREGNANT WOMEN**
As you all know, we started wearing clothes to protect our poor, little fur-less bodies from being at the mercy of the elements and our fellow animals. Then, we began to specialize our clothes to accomidate where we lived. The people that lived in cold weather climates wore animal furs, the people from deserts found out about wool, people in semi-arid conditions used cotton, people in the rainforests wore little or nothing at all (yup, they dressed in their birthday suits), and the list goes on. Later, clothes became a class statement as well as a function of everyday work and a way to subjugate women. Yes, all the rich people had the fancy hats and the sparkly beads and such while all the people that worked for a living had to settle for clothes that could easily be repaired, reused, and recycled. While men got to wear comfy trousers and shirts, women have been forced to tighten their waists so that men could encircle them with both hands (scary), wear veils (although that's a religious thing and I guess it's not something I should criticize all that much. Just the way it started), bind their feet, be given no choice between skirts and pants (the function of putting women in skirts I won't mention as of now), wear shoes so high that they nearly fall over, be forced to be 'modest', which includes not showing an arm, and the oh-so-famous 'chastity belts' for fathers who didn't trust their teenage daughters enough or couldn't handle them. Later, as time progressed, we became more and more of a people that dwelled on the inside with controlled temperatures and sunscreen for those days we spent outside. So, people found no need to wear so much of those heavy, cumbersome clothes. Hemlines rose, then rose again, and now are sometimes just a strip of cloth covering private parts. Shirts also began to disappear as people started to enjoy going around in their undergarments. This is evident in those so called 'pop stars' who wear little or no clothes in their 'videos' in the hopes of selling more albums/movies/etcetera. (this applies to both men and women.) However, there is the exception to the scantily clad rule. Some people enjoy going around in clothes that could house a small circuis. This fad might have started with fat Americans who lost so much weight that they were too lazy to go and buy new clothes (except for pink polka-spotted unders) There are those alarmed by the sharp decline in the amount of clothes bought for a dollar (example: $400 jeans and $900 shoes to name some of the less expensive outrageously expensive clothing items) and those that embrace it wholeheartedly because daddy's credit card will solve all problems. My point is that as we become more and more domesticated, our willingness to go around in next to nothingness will increase. In fact, the people of the future might wear nothing at all (except for unders and the like. I hope this makes sense to those of you who read this as I feel really non-sensical at the moment.)
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