USA Today celebrated its 30th anniversary issue, with bolder graphics and fonts (thanks! we can use larger fonts now).
Those papers we pick up outside our hotel rooms when traveling on business (to be left behind at airport lounges).
Anyway. This issue features some “futurists” in each sector: urban architecture, space travel, transportation (Ford), internet (Twitter’s founder) etc…
A quote that jumps out of the page: “in the future, the world will be divided into two classes: those who are told by the machine what to do, and those who tell the machine what to do”.
Wow! unmanned cars which Google is currently test-driving. Electric cars = computers on wheels.
Information will be ubiquitous, like those electricity plugs we scarcely notice.
We will be 30 years older (just think back to 1982. Back then, a friend was “experimenting” with his personal computer).
Back then, we were transiting from cassette to CD, from a weak America into a stronger one (Carter was quoted as saying:” we have a crisis of confidence”), from being a debt-free nation into a debtor nation.
Now, Iran came in full circle.
30 years on.
A lot has happened, but then, nothing has been off-script: we still have an election, the economy is still in the top 3 along with the Arab Spring went south. Hatred incites, love unites. We need Buscalia (love Guru) and Moon (matchmaker).
30 years ago, we got the Concorde, Mc Donald Douglass and McDonald. Now only McDonald (even the Burger King near me was closed). A bounty is still out for the head of Rushdie, the writer in exile.
I heard in Detroit, houses were foreclosed section by section, and sold for 5K, but no one dared to come in and be the first penguin.
30 years on. Where would you be after paying off the house and college loan. Will you be driving an EV? a domestic?
Will we do away with laptop as we now do with desktop (BTW, the father of laptop has just died. He brought friendly design to computers ).
It’s in the American character to “make things happen” instead of “letting history happen to you” (quoted Marc Andreessen).
30 years on. We will all be writing our memoirs (lots of time on hand). WordPress will be bought out by other photo and video sites, perhaps Google. Then when we search for someone or some place, it will show all the tweets and Likes, Linkedin’s profile and blog, video, Google photos and Facebook social graphs).
Our “ego-sphere” will be stored in the Cloud (reminds me of Augustinian line “our soul is anchored in the heavenly, no wonders we feel restless unless we find rest in Thee). Deep search will not be just for private investigators.
Then we will have privacy issues just as in Electronic Medical Records. In an accident, the EV will pop up our medical conditions for first responders to attend to. It’s a bold new world. Can’t wait to grow old. Aging will be a cool thing, and not jeered at (especially when we can afford spare artificial organs) (see my other blog on NEVER LET ME GO) . We will stay active in the cities and don’t have to move to Cocoa Beach, Florida (home of the USA Today founder). 30 years ago, even while escaping to Bali or Bahamas, we couldn’t wait to get online (You’ve Got Mail). 30 years on, we can’t wait to get offline. Maybe the hotel still leave a copy of USA Today outside the door. This time, definitely in bolder prints.
Thang Nguyen 555 