Whatever happened to the future? I remember being a young lad and wondering, as everyone does, what the future held for me , and the world. This was the late seventies, the time of punk and Star Wars. The mood of the nation was glum. Like any young fool, I was optimistic, despite having the usual working class existence of the time. I had a second hand bike, one pair of jeans, and usually kept my school uniform on until bedtime. I never went anywhere on holiday (never even flew until I was 27!) but the future was where it would all get better for me! I vividly recall thinking that a VCR would be the ultimate consumer item (remember they were still almost science fiction back then). The 21st century would have wonders aplenty. Flying cars, 3D TV, impossible high skyscrapers, computer controlled motorways, social equality, calorie free food, genetic engineering, and so on and so on!What brought on this wave of retro nostalgia? Well I was looking at the cars around me. They are bland, boring and boxy. I pictured cars in the now, as having gull-wing doors, silent gas turbine or electric engines, automatic pilot, be designed around the passengers, and above all look bloody futuristic!! (OK even a ten year old Billy realised that flying cars were way way off!) Unfortunately there are very few cars that look like they belong in the now (maybe the new Honda Civic?) concept cars at auto shows often look the biz, but profits, and a fear of radical design mean we get yet another slightly different Golf.
My future never arrived, change sort of creeps up on you, bit by bit, until one day you go;
"Oh! things are slightly different"
I watched "Children of Men" earlier this week, and the future Britain it presents is all too real a possibility. We are already spiralling into a militaristic paranoid present. I recommend you watch it, if you forget the main infertility storyline, it's frighteningly plausible!...a little light relief:
No comments:
Post a Comment