The Future Dead Ahead

I’ve lived through two-thirds of the 20th century and fifteen years of the 21st, and in that time I’ve witnessed remarkable changes, most of them good, some of them bad. There have been huge social changes and mind-boggling technological advances. I’m now living in an age when people believe that guns don’t kill people, that Donald Trump is a legitimate presidential candidate, when religious zealots think that killing all infidels is God’s will. An age when young people think rap is music and rap tracks are songs, find texting more meaningful than face-to-face conversation and raw fish more delectable than filet mignon, believe that body ink is essential for physical beauty and that e-books are better than books, contend that Bridesmaids is funnier than It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, regard correct spelling and grammar as old fogey concerns, and crown Lady Gaga the standard for fashion. On the other hand, young people are smarter and better informed than the youth of the past. They’re taller, faster, fitter, and stronger than almost any of their predecessors, and they’ve learned how to use all these maddening technological gadgets that have all but taken over our lives. Not that many decades ago, we were told that color photography and color television were impossible, that we’d never see cars that could drive themselves or planes that could fly themselves, that computers would never be affordable for home use, that only Dick Tracy could see someone as they spoke on a phone. In the middle of the last century, we were afraid that nuclear war would destroy the world. And since then, we’ve been engaged in almost continuous wars in Korea, Viet Nam, and the Middle East. And today we have much to fear—climate change, drought, melting ice caps, the deep web, drug cartels, and terrorist groups. We fear suicide bombers and AK-47-wielding crazies who spray shots into theaters and restaurants and schools, taking as many lives as possible. Technological advances are both frightening and exhilarating, coming so fast we can hardly keep up, pointing to a future we can’t imagine. Social changes have seen the election of a black president and the likelihood of a female president, majority acceptance of bi-racial and same-sex marriages, and transgender surgery, of near-racial equality. We’ve come a long way in my lifetime. We still have a long way to go. I’m sorry I won’t be around to see where the next fifty years takes us.