I remember watching Back to the Future, Part II, when Marty goes to the future and sees some amazing things like a roadway in the sky, 3D advertisements, and the granddaddy of them all — a hoverboard. I clearly recall watching the movie with my mouth wide open thinking that in 2015 we were going to see some “serious shit.”
But then the years passed, as they always do, and somewhere in the passing the dream lost some of its luster. Y2K wasn’t nearly as dynamic as I thought it would be. The death of my 20s didn’t bring with it any fanfare. And now it’s 2015 and I don’t feel any different. Just older. Now as I rapidly approach 40 I look back at the film with a firm sense of nostalgia, a yearning for everything to be just as the director envisioned it 25 years ago. But it’s not.
What fascinated me the most was this idea that science and technology would have advanced at a feverish pace in the intervening years, that we would be able to fit a pizza into our pocket and then use a machine to rehydrate it, that we would be able to float off the ground on fast boards that moved at our command. But the best we’ve been able to do is a Keurig that only barely changes the way we drink coffee, and the return of 3D movies to theaters, which isn’t really an advancement after all.
The closest we’ve come to a “sky mall” are those ridiculously priced shops in the airport, and cars remain firmly planted on the ground. There’s no Max Headroom-like computer dispensing Pepsi at futuristic diners, and using your hands to play a video game is not like playing “a baby’s toy.” Sure, we have the Kinect system from XBox, but that was a short-lived sensation that has overstayed its welcome. It’s almost as if even though we have really great new ideas they just move at a more glacial pace than envisioned in the iconic film.
And that’s okay. If we even had Pit Bulls, what would I do with them anyway? What part of our society now hasn’t progressed at least somewhat since 1989? We are where we’re supposed to be technologically, even if we are leagues behind where some director thought we should be. Although abolishing all lawyers might be an efficient way to expediate trials and deliver verdicts, it would also eliminate fair trials. And changing the weather to suit our needs would feel good at first, but it would take the surprise out of the experience, the element of spontaneity to it all.
The future is now, and for better or for worse we don’t have ridiculous technologies like the ones from Back to the Future, Part II, but we also don’t have the cool aspects of them either. I am in the drawing to get some of those new sneakers with power laces, though, but I hope they’re out by October 21st or all hell will break loose. Because we all know that’s the only technology that is both cool and functional from the film. 2015 here we come, whatever that means.
Sam
My daughter broke her iPad. It was one of those happenstance incidences, one of those once-in-ninety-nine-times incidences. And I saw it happen in slow motion, as if the iPad were swimming through water. The screen cracked, sending spiderweb lines nearly to the top of the device, and the panel was dented at the bottom. I looked at it. Then I looked at my daughter who had dropped it mere moments before, and her mouth had formed this perfect ‘O’ of surprise that quickly turned to consternation. But that was just the beginning of the saga.
Patient X
Posted in commentary, Uncategorized, tagged commentary, generation x, technology, thoughts on April 11, 2017| Leave a Comment »
“Common knowledge proclaims the death of dreams, but we are still sleeping, waiting to awaken.” ~Theodicus
I am Patient X. I am on the cusp of relevance and irrelevance at the same time. I am from the generation that is both full of itself and apart from itself at once, still struggling to define itself in the Era of the New, where more recent means better. I fight to maintain shouting distance with these new technologies, to keep up to date and utilize the next best thing.
But I will forever be behind because advancements stop for no one. My computer was obsolete before I even extricated it from the plastic. The phone I have in my pocket is two generations behind and I still don’t understand all of its features and functions. I know of drones, and Amazon Fire Stick, and cars that park themselves, but I couldn’t possibly tell you how to manipulate any of them. Which is okay, because even though I’m deep into this age of technology, I can still appreciate rudimentary constructs.
I am Patient X. There will never be another like me, like my generation, straddling the line between what has come before, what is here now, and what dreams may come true in the (very near) future. If I spent enough time delving into all this technology until I was overflowing with knowledge I still wouldn’t be caught up, so I just learn what I need to in order to get by, and I hope things don’t change too much more from now until I will stop needing all of it. If I will ever stop needing all of it.
It’s interesting to watch my children (aged 11 and 8) mastering what seems so complex to me, and laughing at my forays into figuring it all out. I take out a flash drive, something that used to be so en vogue not too long ago, and they look at me as if I’ve grown three heads. It’s all digital, they tell me. Transferring files is as easy as snapping your fingers anymore, and I just scratch my head. There are more than a few ways to do any one thing these days, and learning just one of those ways takes me a while. Mastering it takes me even longer, if it can be done at all.
I am Patient X. I will probably always love blogging, even after it too has become outmoded, replaced by whatever replaces Twitter, sent out to pasture to chew its own cud. I will probably always appreciate the smell of a book more than the words on a screen. I will probably always question if digital music is real or just a figment of our collective imagination. I will probably always want to figure things out for myself rather than simply Googling it.
The future is in convenience, tied to whatever can make things easier for us as a civilization, and in some ways that’s already true now. Taking time to do things carefully, in painstaking details, is a dinosaur, lost to the ravages of time. I already miss it, even though its ghost is still around.
Haunting me.
Sam
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