Ten things we really expected by now

Right now, Right this VERY MINUTE.  I'm in the year 2013.  TWENTY FREAKING THIRTEEN!  You know that that means?  As far as Hollywood is concerned, I'm WAY in the future.  So far in the future in fact that everything they predicted about the future in the 70's already happened and we are living a life of the... (cue theramin) Feeeeewwwww-tuuuuuuuuure.  Except here I am,  still here,  going to my job,  and working like a sucker.  What should I be doing and what should I have?  This stuff:

10.  Tin Foil Clothes.  -  Seems like every glimpse into the future includes some kind of tin foil clothing.  If not on us, at LEAST on our much more advanced, fashion sense stilted alien friends.  Instead, it appears that our clothes really aren't all that much different.  Sure, a collar here, a flair there, a color spectrum shift and we've got the next years fashions, but I see no puffy hoop like skirt with glitter and silver. No pants that look like pleated tin foil What happened?!?

9. A really cool gun PEW PEW - The future according to hollywood is a pretty violent place.  That's ok, we seem to enjoy it.  But those bullets are such a hassle, what with the lead and gunpowder and all.  Of course in the future, our enemies will be dispatched by environmentally friendly laser beams.  The will do all of the dirty work of the bullet by using only power, which is of course readily available everywhere.

8. No Disease - Nope, by now, none of us should be sick.  In fact, by now, we should have little nano-robots that rush about our bodies busying themselves with the task of making us immortal.  Of course the robots would replace our own disease fighting robots the white blood cells, but honestly we all saw that coming anyway.  The white blood cells are no match for the latest bird flu, bubonic plague or bout of consumption.  Our little nanobot friends will identify all hostile alien mico-bodies and search and DESTROY (very likely with lasers).  Then they will transmit the information to fellow nano-bots floating around just to make sure it doesn't come back.  We aren't even close to this one.

7. Flying car - The Holy Grail of future achievements.  If we can't have anything else, we want flying cars.  Of course our cars appear to be taking a turn for the better with self driving.  When all cars are self driving, I won't care if we are trundling, flying, or digging our way to our destination, I will be busy playing candy crush.  Nope, no flying car, and honestly, none on the horizon.  Except for one, which is interesting because it looks cool and flies fast, but it's a bit pricey and nobody really wants it to work because if you get a fender bender in the air, it will probably mean more than a trip to the auto body shop.

6. Solar Powered everything - Energy really needs to change around a bit.  Our batteries are our dear friends, but someone needs to make them do some pushups or something.  I'm waiting for my cellphone to get an app that will pirate energy from neighboring cellphones!  YARRRRRR!!!!  By now everything should have been ambiently powered by our good friend the sun.  We just walk out to our car and it just starts up when it feels the heat of brave Helios' rays.  Sorry.  we are still on fossil fuels for the most part and our batteries have enough toxic chemicals to make any Despotic Dictator bent on country wide destruction green with envy.

5. Space Vacations -  We are close on this one.  Sure, you gotta pay millions, and your destination is actually back on earth.  So we aren't QUITE there.  I"m talking space Disney complete with artificial gravity and a Pluto that gets more respect.  Instead we hop up into the stratosphere, say 'Wow, everything looks so peaceful from up here' and zoom back down for a landing and you get the feeling you've been had.

4. No More Pregnancies - We won't have babies the normal way anymore, it's too inefficient and too dangerous to both the mother and the fetus.  Instead we will grow them all in incubation bins and they will all come out perfectly because they are only the best of each parent's DNA. A recording of their mother's voice was played throughout their gestation for good bonding.  They will be perfect human specimens.  Hasn't happened yet.  Nope, the good old fashioned way by farming the cabbage patch is how we are getting them babies right now.

3. Robots do everything for us! - This one is on it's way, it's just not here yet.  The problem is that during the transition, there will be more and more people out of work, not because they are ill educated or because they lack skills, but rather the robots are doing everything for us more accurately and cheaper.  Eventually the capitalist system falls apart because production does not require labor anymore.  Only more machines.  Not really there yet, but some evidence is there.

2. One world government - Looks like it's gonna be China eventually.  Not yet of course, but in the distant future, the one world government will be run quasi-democratically with nation states influencing heavily any actual policy decisions.  Everything will have to be ratified by other nation states of course, but population will sway lots of opinions.  It's ok, when there is one world government, everything will be easier and better right?...RIGHT?  Well, at least we are not there yet.  In fact, the way the world is, we've still got quite a bit to get there.

1. Aliens - What future would be complete without our green and gray friends from outer space (or inner space?)  They should have been here by now helping us with our complex social issues and eating our weak.  Instead, we still just have movies about them.  Some are friendly, some are mean.  All are fantastic and not really here...yet.







Well, I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into our wishful future tense as we thought it should have been about 40 years ago.  I'm longing for a future where income tax has been eliminated.  Not bloody likely.

10 things we would do if we could time travel

Many times the vacant hours of work are encumbered with the speculations of behaviors giving different fantastic situations.  Lottery winning;  What super powers would be best;  Time travel.  Time travel is actually the most likely of the trio.  What would we really do?   This blog will be difficult enough to write without tying myself down to any theoretical model so I'll accept all of them and apply them as I see fit.  So there.  I suspect that you would do some of them and not bother with others, but these are the things I would do.

10.  Get rich quick.  -  Sure we would but how?  What's the best way?  If you are really a time traveler, you really can't afford to make it all in one swoop.  Even if you are betting on the 1989 super bowl, you need to remember who it was that was playing and who won.  You assume that you could make a big bet for a one time haul, but people would wonder.  Stock market is worse, you'd have the SEC looking into your dealings because you aren't are part of the people that they know that make money.  On the other hand, all you'd really need to do is put your money into mutual funds etc the good old fashioned way and just keep going back in time and adding to several different funds.  by the time history catches up to you.  You have more money than Croesus.

9. Warn yourself - How many mistakes have each of us made in the course of our lives?  I for one can't really count that high.  Some are bigger than others of course and those are the ones I would do without.  in fact, I would very much like to go back in time and tell myself to NOT TAKE UP SKIING.  It's fine for all of you, but I damaged my knee in such a way that I really could have done without the experience.  Of course that is one among several mistakes made that I could sooner live without.

8. Look at where you used to live because it's not there anymore. - Going back in time for most people would involve going back to things that you find familiar now.  After my own father died, I had an opportunity to go visit his house when he was growing up.  The people that took ownership of it changed it to the point that it was hardly the same structure.  I did not have a lot of memories of that place, but the ones I have are dear.

7.  Give key information to the right people - The problem with being me or you is that none of us are so influential that we will put our mark in making life easier or better.  If we have a time machine, we could make a stop off to certain people that would prove very influential.  Take for example the supreme court's ruling the corporations are in fact people.  We could go back and tell some justices to pull their collective heads out and think about the future of what they are asking for.  We could go back and give all of our current science to companies we like and see if our current time becomes better.  Of course the problem with playing this game of second guessing is we have no idea what the other path would hold.  Sure many of us might think we have a good idea, but honestly we don't.  There is no way to know what would happen to current time if you change the past.

6.  Kill Hitler -  Sure who wouldn't?  Go back in time and destroy who is arguably the worst monster humanity has created.  But lets look at this.  Is it really Hitler that was bad?  or he just the catalyst for a bunch of people that were really pretty bad themselves?  Who knows.  Maybe if they didn't have him as a focal point, they wouldn't have been able to allow all the other atrocities to go on.  Hard to say.  Ultimately Hitler was defeated in a war he couldn't win.  but like a Terrorist with a nuclear weapon, even though he was doomed to failure, he did make his mark.

5.  Save an endangered species! - when I grew up I remember seeing a video where a farmer had killed what was the last male passenger pigeon.  Then the female died without any eggs.  I don't remember much but that scene from that cartoon.  But how many species could we save while we are looking to go back and right wrongs or at least change things.

4.  Make a KILLER Magic trick - Ok, so the trick requires you to find a spot of land that will be untouched by anyone.  Find a unique tree that would be fairly inviolate.  Now take a deck of cards and tell the person you want to impress to pick a card out of the deck.  random or not.  Take their card and go to the tree and climb up it and find caved and healed into the tree the card they picked.  After the trick is done and they are amazed, write yourself a note to make sure and go back in time and carve that card into the side of that tree about 10 years prior.  Oddly enough, this is also a good way to find out if time machines exist at all.  I already know the answer, but you can find out for yourself.

3.  Go tell Stephen Speilberg and Robert Zemeckis  how it REALLY is -  Most people have seen Back to the future.  To a lesser extent the 2 other movies that made up the trilogy.  At the time the movie was wonderful and had the most current clothing trends etc.  Now puffy hunter vests and cassette tape walk man's seem to be at best a little goofy.  But that second movie made some pretty direct predictions about how the future would play out.  well, now we can go back and tell them how to REALLY make the movie and people will be freaked out by the accuracy!

2.  Kill Hitler, but this time do it right. - Everyone knows if you go back in time and Try to kill Hitler, you'll mess it up the first time or someone will prevent you from doing it or something will happen that will make it not quite work out the way you thought it should.  So you gotta go back and correct yourself.  This will also test if you can talk to yourself in the past or if it will make you both explode or something.  I have a feeling that rule was put into place by script writers so their stories would work.








1. Make your mark - Ok, now that you've solved your problems, the worlds problems, you've become rich, and you've made the world a better place, it's time to get some glory.  Go back and find a discovery that would have been discovered by someone else and jump the claim.  put your name in the history books.  Sure this is cheating, but really what part of time travel wouldn't be?  I think I discovered Dinosaur fossils.  Or maybe relativity.  Not sure, but it will be something big.  Maybe I'll put some pipes in the side of a mountain that make no sense.  That sounds cool.

February already?!  Where has the year gone?  Why doesn't anyone say that?