There was this documentary series I saw on public television back in the early Eighties, I think it was called “Fast Forward” or something. It was terribly prescient and had a very avid view of information technology–computers, networks, telecommunications. Years later and the future that the series pundits (I think they even had a young Nicholas Negroponte on there.) predicted has more or less come to pass. The Internet is commonplace now but it continues to affect our social world in ways that are subtle and surprising. Most of the time I don’t really pay attention to this. Plenty of others have pushed many pixels around to say something about it–privacy, intellectual property, security.
So, at the start of my fifth decade, I am living in the future of my teenage years. What am I still waiting for?
- The space elevator.
- Rejuvenation and life extension.
- And the key one, a fast and powerful way to insert training into my brain–the science fiction image of taking a pill to learn a foreign language.