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The City of the Future
Ponca City, We Love You writes "One century ago, many Americans still had not seen a movie or ridden in an automobile. The New York World greeted its readers on January 1, 1908 with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America: 'We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves,' the newspaper said. 'We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need.' Today the NY Times asked ten knowledgeable New Yorkers to imagine New York City a century from today. Their visions include archaeological excavations at the Fresh Kills landfill, the waterfront at Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue, a dome over Central Park, and a virtual reality grid superimposed over the city."
From Ken Perlin, professor of computer science at New York University "... everyone's eyes will be implanted with tiny displays. All the information we need about the city will be accessible to us without conscious effort: where to go, what to buy ... how to hook up with friends."
... will be heroes"
;-)
And not surprisingly, Robin Nagle from the New York City Department of Sanitation predicts "Sanitation workers
On a lighter note for the holiday season, here are the Christmas Lights of the Future!
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I've come to really respect scientists who tell reporters to shove off when they ask about the world of the future. So much of future technology has to do with culture, and so little actual science, that it's like asking what color of clothing will be 'in' on 2106.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Alas, vile greedheads interfered. As those lowbrows who are forever exclaiming about, "...if they can put a man on the moon...." Of course, they murdered the man behind that project (JFK), which killed many a future prediction and dream. Therein lies the problem.
Urban transportation in America, a pathetic pipe dream in most places - but it could have been realized many, many years ago. As that House Select Committee Investigation, back in 1974, demonstrated, General Motors, Firestone and Sun Oil conspired to curtail any valid and optimal urban and exurban transportation systems throughout America as they wish to sell tires, large vehicles running on gas (buses) and oil.
Can anyone seriously ponder any predictions of the future given the imbeciles currently being elected as president? Given the criminals being currently elected to VP? SecDef? SecState?
Will it become a place where Latin American and African Christians live in tense coexistence with Moslems, while absentee landlords from Asia own everything? Will whites become so rare that New Yorkers will stare in fascination at white people? Jews will have long since have converted to Buddhism or intermarried with others, that they are a regarded as a mysterious ancient people like the Druids or Manicheans. The world's economic center of gravity will have long since shifted South and East, so New York will be a historical curiosity like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh today. (In their time, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were the apex of American culture and technology.) At the request of France's Islamic government, the Statue of Liberty will be replaced with a statue of Sayyid Qutb, every schoolkid will take museum trips to the "Palestinian Holocaust Museum", Chinese financiers will turn Central Park into a replica of the Forbidden City, while trendy New Yorkers will receive cosmetic gene therapy to look more Arab, African, or Hispanic.
Is unabated pessimism.
In 1908, the sky seemed the limit and the predictions tended to focus on new, marvelous machines and how they would make life better for all.
In 2008, it's not so much about the technology or science but about how so few are wealthy and the general feeling is that we are on the edge of a long hard decline. The only upshot beeing that we'll somehow continue to have cutting edge tech.
Is it just me or are people genuinely very worried, frightened and so deeply unhappy with world affairs to the point that they think it's just crap from here on out and we should welcome an age of mechanized oppression?
To say no US Citizen would be able to afford to live in NYC while Oil Barons owned entire burroughs is complete and utter BS in my book.
It reeks of weakness and apathy. The same weakness and apathy that brings us all the people who whine and cry about Bush and his administration yet fail to do anything about it. The same weakness and apathy that has Americans crying about Global Warming, but they all shut their faces about it when they go home to waste several hundred kilowatts watching Survivor and American Idol.
This was supposed to be a dreamy piece, about "what if" and where "anything" could happen. What do we get? Hit over the head with "FAIL FAIL FAIL" again and again throughout the article. Not one prediciton was positive, each was somehow foreseeing a darker future where we are all worse off except the monied elite. From these predictions, it seems people have given up and the future they are grateful to accept is one where Asia leads and we just consume their tech and get whatever kind of living they give us.
Pretty sad if you ask me.