How will the future view us?

PLEASE NOTE that this is not a diary but an attempt to leave writings intended for future historians in 2525 and beyond. The 2525 is taken from the song by Zager and Evans,,,,

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find…..

15/1/2011

I was ironing and watching a programme I had recorded where some people were acting out living on an Edwardian farm down here in Devon at Morwelham Quay, Living History I think they call it. I was particular interested as it was in our own county. Some time before the same three people had lived a year on a ‘Victorian Farm’ in Shropshire and that had been equally as fascinating. One difference though. Some of the things they used in this one were still around when I was a girl in the nineteen forties.

Set me thinking how you in years to come will reconstruct our lives in the early 2000s. How will you think of our flat screens that we think so good when you possibly have holographs acting out a play in the corner of your room? How will you look at our clothes that we have to wash and iron when you either have clothes that self clean and or throw away clothes and have new ones every day made by a computer or robot. Will you think all our housework to keep our houses clean a great laugh? Will you think our attempts at communication hilarious.

I often quote an experiment I read about at Duke University in USA. A Professor and some of his students were rigged up with a computer and had a connection to all the others built into a head set. It was viewed in one side of a pair of glasses worn all the time. The group built up a rapport that was as close to them as breathing. When the experiment ended they were almost bereft of their intimate connection with their class mates.

This was some years ago but I can now see it happening particularly to the young via their mobile phones and even older folk as well. They always want to be in contact with their groups in some form, text, phone, email, video and so on. If you see someone with their hand close to their ear you immediately think they are on their mobile.
So will you future people have it plumbed into your brain soon after birth and have to be ‘In Contact’ all your lives? The outcome could be mankind will change and become telepathic if not in reality then by being hot wired.

So here I am tapping in this writing on a keyboard and seeing it on a screen. Even I have moved beyond a hard copy on paper. We you in a hundred years time reconstruct my sort of life and watch it on your ……what ever you watch it on.
Of course you may be back in the dark ages and just find our detritus puzzling.

The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland, a wonerdful bit on 21st century engineering.  It lift whole canal boats to a higher level or brings them back down. It was pouring with rain the day we went there.

                               

                      
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