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I'm not talking about what you wanted to be or where your life would be like in the future. But I often wonder: for example: if you were a kid in the 1960s did you ever imagine what life would be like by 2000?
I look at a lot of paleo future stuff and I'm fascinated by it. I often would like to know growing up did you ever imagine the future would be some kind of retro futurism by now?
In the 19 80s I remember using a phone where u could SEE another person on the other end was gonna be so radical! Now that i can use Skype or face time someone, i never even use it!
Cars were gonna be "computerized" and drive themselves, maybe even fly over traffic! At least one of these is coming soon
I watched too much old tv reruns growing up, and naievely believed that job security existed for most. I also was disappointed that our world doesn't look like something out of The Jetsons by now.
Politics and the Future occupied most of my thoughts in the late Sixties and and I largely switched to Religion in the Seventies. In my mind these were largely inter-connected as the Church my Aunt took me too was Liberal and the first paster told me that the Book of Revelation was about nuclear war while the next pastor preached a sermon about how we had to go to the Moon to avoid the Ice Age that was coming to Earth. My real mother had died and I was sent to live with this Aunt and Uncle from the summer of 1967 to the spring of 1970. They had invested heavily in educational books and magazines for their children and my cousins had bought quite a few science fiction books--all of which I devoured. I wanted to become a science fiction writer, switched to pastor in the 1970s--my little part of the Jesus Movement. The Screaming Sixties were also a time of great civil unrest and so I took a great interest in politics and took a great interest in the news. I wondered if we would have a Revolution--and I could argue either side Left or Right. I reasoned we could conquor inflation by trading five Greenbacks for four Bluebacks. I could write political fiction as well as science fiction, saw little difference between the two.
I was a great fan of electric cars, the metric system and space travel--all of which we would have by 2000. Walking along the creek where I did most of my thinking at my Aunt and Uncle's place I realized I would be 47--an unimaginable age--in the year 2000. When I wasn't writing books I thought about being a greenhouse farmer and a fish farmer. About three years ago I did some calculations on what I could have made from a greenhouse and have been kicking myself for not saving a little money for that purpose as I would have had an appreciable sum saved up by the end of 1981 when Reagan agreed to bail out Chrysler and a couple of years later I would have gotten back $20 for every $1 I put in and that would have been enough to have built greenhouses with. I recognized Chrysler as the Chance of a Life time back then, but hadn't saved any thing up to put into it.
Six days after High School graduation I was in the U. S. Navy for the tail end of Viet-Nam. Now all these many years later that act of patriotism has proven to be a wise decision as I am qualified for a Veterans Pension that is better than Social Security (any one who has served anywhere since August of 1991 will also qualify). I joined a very Conservative, Bible-believing church and my background has helped them weave through many unexpected situations. What will the Future bring? When I was on my Aunt and Uncle's farm and a calf got out you did not chase the calf. Instead one person would circle off to the calf's right and another off to the calf's left and both a little behind the calf. The person on the calf's right would yell and wave his hands and the calf would head left. The person on the left would then yell and wave his hands and the calf would turn to avoid him. In this fashion the calf was maneuvered back into the corral and the next stop from there was the slaughterhouse. And that's what I have seen the Devil doing to this world since the Screaming Sixties.
George Jetson stuff - flying cars, robots, etc.
It's kind of disappointed somewhat - in 1970 or so I did a grade school report on possible Mars flight and remember predicting a Mars manned landing, this based on something I lifted from the tech magazines of that day, by 1984.
I was 13 in 65. I though we'd have all these fantastic space inspired gizmos. Never imagined we'd all have our own communicators and rely on them so much. I loved my first microwave. I got involved in computers when pc's were mostly raido shack and mainframes ruled. But I though our toys would be fantastic, but then all of that was if we didn't get blown away in a nuclear war. I still remember Cuba and dad staying home that day and mom keeping me out of school so if they did fire the mistles we'd be together. I was eleven.
Yeah of course.. I'm still waiting on the projected practice of complete meals in pill form.. That was a prognostication I wasn't feelin'.
Another I one I remember was the concept of one giant East Coast metro area PortPort, that would stretch uninterrupted from Portland Maine to Portsmouth Virginia..
I find personally (I guess my individual, innate hard-wiring), that I've always been more interested in lookin' back to the past, than into the future tho (?)
Aside from the flying cars I was SURE we would have, I also thought there would be a cure for the common cold and that cancer would no longer be a threat to anyone. 50+ years and still waiting. I never imagined smart phones, and when microwave ovens became available I thought they were amazing. Actually, I still do.
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