Blogatron

Where is My Future?

Yesterday at work I brought the calendar that hangs on the bulletin board next to my desk to the other end of the building in order to copy upcoming events into it from another, larger calendar which hangs on the wall in someone else's office. Most, but not all, of the events on the large calendar had previously been copied, by me, out of a notebook in which I had jotted them down during a meeting. As I wrote down these things in my sort of bad handwriting into yet another set of too-small boxes, a feeling of the wrongness of it all overcame me.

It's not that I think I'm too good to really have to earn a living. (Well, it's not just that, anyway.) It's that I fail to understand the endless shuffling and running hither and thither and filing this and copying that and faxing the other that still seems to afflict the world today. My goodness gracious me, it's 2003! I should not have to be copying things by hand at all, let alone three times. At the very most I should have to enter my meeting notes into an electronic tablet of some sort which transfers the information to the beautifully designed LCD calendar display in the central office, shoots a message off to my mini calendar to do the same, and prints a hard copy right into the correct folder in the digital filing cabinet/fax/print unit, simultaneously creating a new folder and label for it. Is my time really best spent on all this endless repetition?

I become increasingly vexed at the ways in which "modern" earth life fails us. I still have to wash dishes. I still have to walk places under my own power. I still have no flying car. I still have to type instead of just thinking at my computer. Life is not changing for the more convenient at an acceptable rate, and I can't help but feel a bit cheated. Where is my beautifully designed, smoothly running future, where gadgets do something meaningful? Don't think I don't appreciate innovations in entertainment - my tired mind certainly needs new sources of distraction - but where are the researchers dedicating themselves to relieving me of my tedious errands? Right now it's all, ooh, we can make a stereo that matches your computer and it has a neat light display and now you can put in 100 CDs instead of just five, but meanwhile, I still spend an inordinate amount of time at the grocery store, and when I am done, I have to trudge along with a heavy cart instead of frisking beside a small levitation device.

Come on humans!! You're all I've got. One of the great things about you is your visionary capabilities, so get cracking with the improbable physics, if you please. Some teleportation would be nice. A little nanotech wouldn't hurt, so when I wake up at 3 am with a craving for Necco Wafers, I can just materialize some. Don't give me those "gray goo" scare tactics, mister, it's possible and I want some!

And if someone could send me a device that does filing, well then I would just kiss them. Because right now I am that device, and if I get one. more. papercut, there's going to be trouble.

Posted by hilatron at February 27, 2003 11:00 AM