Futurama

                                                            

by Michele

The other day I had one of those classic experiences.  I went into a chic little boutique and picked out a cute little outfit.  A long red sweater, mid-thigh length and belted, with a pair of black leggings.  As I handed over my credit card to the teenager behind the counter, I realized -- I'd owned this exact outfit circa 1982.                                                         

"I should have kept my clothes from the 80s," I said.  "They're all back in style."

"My mom tells me that all the time," she said in a bored drawl.

Her mom.  And then it hit me.  Not so much that I've become my mother, or her mother, but that I'm living in my own future.  My kids are living in their good old days, their soft-focus childhood, but for me it's space age, science fiction, futurama territory.  The future has happened.  I'm walking around in it.

    I remember realizing how old I'd be in the year 2000.  Remember calling it that?  The very sound of the number seemed impossibly futuristic, and the age I'd be sounded so old to my young ears.  Well, been there, done that.  It came, it went, and what's more, it sounds young to me now.  And let's not even get started on how 1984 came and went well before that.

Some things seem oddly the same.  We're bogged down in an unpopular foreign war.  The people in the White House keep an enemies list and engage in domestic spying.  But other than that, everything feels really different.  Some of it's stuff we've known was coming for a long time, so we shouldn't be surprised.  How long have we been hearing that China would take over the world?  At some point in the 1960s, somebody looked at how many people they had over there and figured out that someday, China would be a superpower.  Well, the future is now.  China's economy is growing at more than ten per cent a year.  Nobody else can keep up.  We certainly can't.  The once almighty dollar is just so much green paper, losing ground every day to the euro, a currency unthought of in my youth.

The same is true for global warming.  We've heard about it for years.  There were predictions and counter-predictions, arguments and treaties, movies and books.  Argue all you want, but global warming is upon us.  We're walking around in it.  California is burning, we're running out of water.  The future happened while we were busy debating it.

Other things about this future we didn't see coming.  There are marvels we could never have imagined.  In grammar school, I learned about inventions that changed the world.  Electricity and the telephone and the automobile and the airplane took us from primitive times to the jet age.  Nothing else like that would ever happen again, I thought.  All the great stuff had been invented already, and things just weren't going to change that much.  For a while, it felt like they didn't.  But then all of a sudden -- shazzam!

                                                          

Thousands of blogs could be written about how the computer has changed the world.  Let's start with the fact that you're reading this blog right now instead of reading a newspaper.  There are good things about that.  This blog is free.  You can talk back to it (or me) and it (or I) will talk back to you.  But there are bad things about it also.  Newspapers are shrinking, and that has all sorts of unintended consequences.  There is no more book publicity.  The comics are dying.  I heard Garry Trudeau speak, and he said that cartoons are moving online because of shrinking newspaper readership. Because cartoons are moving online, it's possible to make them animated.  So the static, black-and-white newsprint cartoon strip is slowly -- or quickly, really -- being replaced by color animation.  That's okay with me.  I don't love cartoons anyway.  And yet, it's really sad.

Meanwhile, records and CDs and stereos have been replaced by downloads and iPods, which means that albums are being replaced by singles because nobody listens to an entire album by a single artist anymore.  My car has seventeen cupholders, a DVD player, satellite radio and a GPS named Carlos who lives in my dashboard and tells me what to do.  Even though I love Carlos, I also love this brilliant piece by David Brooks on how dangerous it is that we're outsourcing our brains to smart technology.

It's a brave new world, and we're walking around in it.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  As far as I can tell, it's both.

Comments

[Susan]

Great post, Michele. Sometimes I'll mention things to my children (both under 10) about having once owned an album, or the days when there were no microwaves or CD players or DVDs, or - God forbid, no Webkinz! - and they both look at me like I have 3 heads. I love blogging and the ease and access of the Internet, and at least half the songs on any "album" - er, CD? - are crap, so I like the singles downloads. But I don't ever want to live in a society without real newspapers or books; there is something so wonderful about holding a paper in your hands, or settling down in a comfie chair to read a novel. Business people have crooned about becoming paperless for decades and there are still piles of (mostly unread) memos and papers at my desk so I have hope...

[William Simon]

As a child of the 50's and 60's, I can still clearly recall the television news images of daily commutes to work on Mars, sleek form-fitting silver fashions for men and women, seven course meals in pill form, and doing business with our neighbors on Alpha Centauri.

At the time, the concept of a small, sleek device one could carry that would allow someone to contact you on a moment's notice was pure "Man from UNCLE" stuff. Which is why I have the Communicator Sound from the show as my cell phone ringer. (And yes, if I know who's calling, I've been known to flip it open and mutter "Open Channel 'D'; once a Geek, always a Geek.) Watching an old movie one weekend, seeing an entire floor used for computer space, I remember thinking "My five-year-old laptop is more powerful."

Still have a turntable and shelves of LPs...and 45s. And I play them once in a while.

I have to agree with Susan, though, on the concept of "paperless"; I want to hold a book in my hands, smell that New Book Smell, sit back, and lose myself in it. Words on a screen just doesn't cut it for me.

Personally speaking, I'm still waiting for my Jet Pack, but I'm giving up hope on that one....

[Nancy Martin]

Shazzam! I want everybody to use that word today. It'll make the world a happier place.

I find myself thinking about clogs. I wore a much-loved, red pair of wooden-soled clogs in college. And I discover Dansko has come out with a pair this year! I shoulda saved mine....

[michele]

When I think about the things I should've saved from the 80s, Nance, I think longingly of my lavender snakeskin open-toed Maud Frizon stilettos. They are so back in style!

Susan, every time I talk to my kids I realize how truly in the future we are. The other night at the dinner table, my older son, who truly communes with the computers, shared something he'd learned from the college kid who's teaching him programming languages. "Did you know," he asked, as if speaking of the Dark Ages, "that when the PC was first invented it was ALL TEXT? No graphics. And no mouse!"

William, I love that that's your ring tone. We all want that as our ring tone too! Is it downloadable from somewhere?

[Laura K]

Years ago, I went to see the movie "The Wedding Singer." (I have no idea when it was, but the movie the movie is set in the 80's.) There's a scene--no more than five minutes long--where one character is dressed in an oversized shirt with a big, wide belt. All I could think at the time was "I had that belt!"

I'd been to see the movie with a friend, her father, and her stepmother and when we came out, without in any way identifying the scene, my friend said, "you know, I had that belt." Both her stepmother an I said "I know! I had that belt, too!"

Her father, completely at a loss, looked at the three of us and said, "what belt?"

[Harley]

Shazzam! Nancy, I HAVE your red Dansko clogs, which were a steal at Nordstrom's Rack. I still shop like my mom shops, although I do buy more of the boring stuff online, esp. around deadline time. Shoes do not fall into that category, of course.

What I hear myself saying all the time around here, in my mom's voice, but not my mom's words: "Turn off the water! We live in a desert! We have to take care of the EARTH!"

Oh, and another difference: my 5-year old, whispering in my ear, "mommy, is that man . . . . (shocked tone) . . . smoking?!"

[William Simon]

Hey Michele-

No, a good quality MP3 isn't available that I've ever found, but I can email the one I made to anyone who wants it. It's a small enough file, no trouble.

[William Simon]

Oh geez, I forgot....

Nancy: SHAZAM!

[Maryann Mercer]

If you want time warp, I look at the A-line (princess) dresses of today and the empire waist tops (that remind me of maternity days) and wish I'd kept my late '60s clothes! What the fashion mavens are calling boot cut pants are just the "today" version of the old bell-bottoms. Not as wide, but flared just the same. And today I'm wearing a paisley blazer...paisley print was a '60's thing too.
I like technology...blenders, food processers, self-cleaning ovens, PC's that work, and e-mail. I miss the vocal connection and the ability of kids to spell words like you and see and friend. I'd rather fly a jet than a prop, and air conditioning is my friend, but I also know we're using up the planet faster than it can replenish itself. As for books, I'd rather hold pages in my hand than download. I'd rather read than listen to books on CD.
On the other hand, when I was younger I believed we'd conquer cancer, heart disease, MS and MD and other horrible things (like poverty) before I got to retirement. By my watch, there's only a few years to go and it ain't happening.
By the way Michele, I bet you look really cool in that outfit! Me, I'd look like a pear on a stick :o)

[michele]

Medical progress! Now there's a topic I didn't cover. Good work spotting it, Maryann.

What amazes me here in Futurama is that so many parts of us can be replaced. My son's teacher just had both hips replaced. My mother-in-law just had both knees replaced. Our eyes can be tuned up. God forbid we're really sick, but the heart can be replaced. We have prosthetic limbs that people can run on well enough to compete in marathons. And while we haven't cured the diseases you mention, we've made enough progress that the brain wears out before the body. Now all we need is to figure out how to replace the brain.

[michele]

Laura K -- I had that belt too!

[Kerry, the Martial Tart]

Great blog, Michele. I still distinctly remember the day my second-grade teacher set us the arithmetic problem of calculating how old we'd be in the year 2000 and thinking that 42 was REALLY old. I remember my Mom telling me how clothing fashions keep returning and I remember thinking just how right she was -- at least three times by now. I thought generating ASCII pictures on a computer was about the coolest thing since sliced bread until modems came along. And I remember how my fellow grad students envied me my PC with the twin 5.5" floppy drives and (are you ready for it?) 300-baud modem that let me talk to the campus computing center to do the statistical analyses for my dissertation.

On the other hand, I miss, on behalf of my students, is the former difficulty of communicating long-distance, which required us to, you know, to either converse with one another in person or, just possibly, to spend time with books instead of Facebook, iPods, etc. At the same time, I wonder now how I ever lived without a cell phone (which I still tend to use primarily as an emergency communication device, but which has given me enormous peace of mind over the years).

Other things I'm still waiting for -- equal pay for equal work; an end to discrimination of all types; and global cooperation on global problems. . .

[rick]

I think every generation goes through this cycle of the past and the future looking bright and dark at the same time.

I remember my uncles waxing lyrically about the good 'ol days in Pennsylvania when I was a teen in the 60s. My mom got tired of them one day and piped up, "Oh you mean the good old days with horseshit in the street, were a scratch would kill you, when you stole coal from the railyards to heat the house, when TB was rampant, and penicillin wasn't around. When lead paint and abspestos (sp) covered everything." (I grew up near Manville, home of Johns-Manville where it did snow abspestos from the factory on occassion in the 1950s.) She continued on. My uncles got silent. After she quit, there was a pause before they started up again. "Hear there's a new chevy coming out next year that's got a bigger engine." "Yeah, but give me a horse. Gas is getting too expensive."

1984 coming and going was a shocker, and then we passed 1999, and I remembered the horrible TV show "1999" and living on the moon or wherever while I struggled to use my slide ruler.

Things come and go. The truly useless gets laid aside for the new. The sentimental lives on in museums or our attics as treasured memories. The future is bright and scary, but no more than it was to my uncles in the 1960s.

I must go work on my novel. I'm murdering a slag or grunge. or is it a hippie or a beatnik or a flapper? I forget.

-rick
http://muse-needed.blogspot.com/

[michele]

Yes, Kerry, the decline in face-to-face communication is a major consequence of our brave new world. I'm so guilty of it. I'd almost say I like communicating on-line better than any other way. My on-line relationships with my blog sisters are so important in my life, and yet I rarely see them in person. Strange!

Welcome, Rick! I have to admit, I don't have a lot of nostalgia for the past (though I do wish I'd saved the clothes.) But I love your description of the future as "bright and scary."

[Judy Larsen]

Shazzam! While I love e-mail and cell phones, especially now that my sons are away at college, I also feel a little sad when I think about the boxes of letters I have that my mom wrote me every week when I was in college. There was something very nice about walking back to my dorm and seeing those envelopes in my little mailbox. That's what I miss--letters.

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

Great blog, Michele.

Guess what I saw in a catalog this weekend? Stirrup pants. My sister is going to be so excited. She had a silver pair that she hung onto until they fell apart.

We were at a Halloween thing over the weekend and there were a bunch of high school kids with the really wide bell bottoms - dragging on the ground, soaking up water to the knee so that they sloshed the jeans of the kid walking along side. Those things were awful when we wore them and nobody has learned anything since then, apparently.

I think my current favorite invention is iTunes, or whatever you call your digital music - 45,0000 songs with me wherever I go! And I am such a music lover that I still buy the whole album - I've always found the very best gems on the B Side. (Man, I hope I'm not the only one who knows what *that* means...)

Shazam!

[Maryann Mercer]

Shazzam!
On the medical front, Michele, I agree...we've made great strides, but when we had to make decisions about my dad, it was good to have a doctor to whom keeping someone alive just because modern technology made it possible wasn't always a good thing.I'm also glad there are strides in areas like living wills and hospices...not pleasant but necessary I think. On that brain matter (no pun intended), what about cloning? I think there was a sci-fi movie about that once upon a time...
Back on the clothing front...sort of. What about platform shoes? I saw more of those this past summer...alas I used to fall off mine :o)

[Maryann Mercer]

Kathy- I buy the whole thing too...and sometimes the songs on the "B" side are better than the hits! :o)

[Nancy Martin]

Maryann---I know exactly what you mean about the "bell bottoms" vis. "boot cut" discussion. My daughter says there's a huge difference. I can't see it.

My new favorite invention is Press 'N Seal. Which I may blog about when times get desperate. It's not like Saran Wrap, it's incredibly better.

[michele]

Something better than Saran Wrap?? Now, that's progress. Saran wrap is one of those everyday annoyances. How often do I use it and yet I've never been able to tear it off the roll without having it scrunch up beyond all ability to fix it.

Another area where we've had progress is shoes. The platforms of today are so much better than the ones we had in the late 70s -- much easier to walk in, and I'm sure society is grateful for that.

Kathy, one area where I'm *not* living in the moment is with digital music. I don't own an iPod! Although, come to think of it, we have speakers in our house attached to a computer server where all our music is stored, so we're digital, we're just not mobile.

[William Simon]

GEEK ALERT, GEEK ALERT:

Is this "Shazam!" said as if by Gomer Pyle, or by Billy Batson so he turns into Captain Marvel? Just asking...:)

[michele]

Gosh, William, I don't know, I've never seen either of those. I meant it as an exclamation of awe at the futurama we live in. Which would be more appropriate?

[Tom]

You are not a 'geek,' CUW, in that you do not bite off the heads of chickens in a circus - not that we know of, at least. You are a techno-cultural antiquarian. With style.

[William Simon]

Well, Michele, I'll go with the Captain Marvel version, just because. BUT I'm open to alternatives.

Tom, we're going to have to sit down over single malt scotch and Opus X cigars one day...:)

[michele]

Scotch and cigars. Thos are things that feel like they'll never go out of fashion and always be around. But then again, people probably once thought that about mead and snuff.