It's amazing what temporal cues you can
pick up from fiction. I'm watching some randomly bad movie right
now, and the smooth, suave operator is wearing a plaid jacket. Not
the classic red/black plaid, but a white/green/black affair. At the
time (early 70's) it would have been considered a certain kind of
stylish, I suppose.
Science fiction is where it glares the
most. I remember reading a short story about two men who were
testing a new propulsion system that allowed ships to go very close
to a star. They nearly died because they didn't read the
mimeographed instruction manual that they were given (not even any
training!).
And the funniest part is that I know
I'll look back in ten years and marvel further about how easy it is
to spot things written/filmed in the 2thousand-teens. Everything
will be “not-quite-black-leather” and Matrix references.
Of course, when considering what
science fiction thinks 2024 will be like and what it will actually be
like, who knows. Some things are coming true and are becoming truer
with every passing day. A 3-D printer is just a nanobot without the
nano (or the automated factory shrunk down to the desktop). When
monitors disappear into glasses, how will that actually affect
things? Vacuum trains and solar-powered roadways producing
electricity (a whole new meaning to the word gridlock). Maybe the
proper beginnings of a space elevator? Or will that be the cold
fusion of the 21st century?
Time is an interesting thing. There
are so many places it could go, and only one it will ultimately lead
us to (depending on the accuracy of certain theories of existence).
What will tomorrow be like, and how will it seem inevitable in
retrospect?
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