Back to the Future
Sometimes we don’t recognize where we’re going. But our kids — or our grandkids, anyway — may not recognize where we’ve been. Steve Marini says, we just have to think, Fast Forward
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Steve Marini
Those words were attributed to the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra. I don’t know if he truly said them, but I submit that the notion is correct. Things change.
The world in which we were born is not the world in which we will die. A quick look back over the years since we early boomers first came into the world confirms this. There were no personal computers in 1946, no network television, no transistor radios, no jet airplanes.
How will the world look in thirty years? Take a look. Thirty years from now, our kids will be telling their kids about the days when:
You could still buy a house for under a million dollars and college only cost about thirty-thousand a year.
Cars ran on gasoline.
People didn’t believe that there really was such a thing as global warming.
Cancer and AIDS were incurable.
The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004.
Using performance enhancing drugs got an athlete in trouble.
New Orleans was a major U.S. city.
A laminated card with your photo was used as identification.
Some TVs weighed nearly two-hundred pounds, got the picture through a cable attached to them, and sat on a stand.
You bought music recorded on physical discs called CDs.
You paid for public street parking spaces by putting coins (a form of money back then) into a machine on the curb.
Many telephones all over the world were connected by wires.
Televisions, telephones, computers, and radios were separate devices.
Doctors actually put their hands inside your body when performing surgery.
Some cameras used film and you had to wait three or four days to get the pictures back from a processing lab.
Doctors used to transplant good organs from dead donors into living recipients.
That’s the future, alright! Now I’ll just settle back in the present where I can listen to the Beatles on my iPod and tune in my new high definition television to watch a Gunsmoke rerun.
Category: Boomer Lifestyle
Good list Steve, not necessarily better (or worse) but certainly different!
thanks
Della
An interesting list.
Within the next 30years Computers will be thousands of times more powerful than at present; hence we will be able to more accurately predict weather patterns for agriculture, when best to grow and where to farm.
Hence its likely we will see accelerated changes, transport will be controlled by computers causing fewer accidents and vehicles will be all powered by bio diesel and or clean sustainable energy sources. You won’t drive your car, having one will gradually become obsolete.
But its also likely outer space trips will be common for those who can afford the fare. I think living in individual homes will diminish in favour of communities sharing all resources, as to do otherwise will be seen as wasteful, which it is.
Best wishes