Ok, its been, what now, about three months since the future began, right? I
have been waiting my whole life for the future and then it finally arrives
and what happens? Nothing. My parents get a CD burner and my friend gets a
DVD player. Not good enough.
Where are all the bubble houses that float in the air and the shiny rocket
boosters that clip on to your moon boots? And the metal joints that make
your arms extend an extra foot with blades and knives that fly out of your
palm when threatened? And maybe I just missed it, but I sure haven't seen
any talking dogs that help disabled people at grocery stores. Last time I
checked, I wasn't having sex with robots in virtual reality and no one is
wearing plastic see-through clothes and triangle sunglasses.
What a disappointment, I had such high hopes for the future. When the ball
dropped I turned to my friends in uncontrolled excitement expecting them to
jump on gravo-boards and fly to the ceiling, or to pull out digital forks,
or something like that. But instead they all shouted "Yea! Its 2000!" and
we hugged.
So I am dealing with it all, no wonderful future full of crazy new
inventions and world peace. At least I could have got a dystopian future,
some cheap Blade Runner knock-off or something, but just not Mad
Max, that
would suck. I would have been content with ramshackle flying vans driven by
Chinese people who wear lots of rusted metal or a new drug called deRez or
automated computer services that always screwed up in funny ways. "Hello, I
would like a 'ponic podpie with extra lichen-salt, please." And then the
computer would say, "BEEP! BEEP! I am sentient. All flesh must die!
BEEP!" or something funny like that.
Nope, no retro future world, no dystopian future world, and especially not a
Gibsonian future world, I could only dream of such a future. Nanobots in my
cortex, tearing apart my brains because I have the ability to find nodal
stability in data-fields and I might uncover how they are going to torch the
virtual city of Jah Babylon in endosphere A and then I team up with a sexy
android girl who is really a double agent for Wintermute or something with
virtual rock stars and AI. Like I said, none of that.
Instead, I get a boring version of the future. More of what we already have
only now in multiple colors. I hope hyper-capitalism implodes on itself so
there might be some real changes. Either that or the secret Robot King
reveals himself.
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