"The future ain't what it used to be." Probably Just as Well

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."
George Burns, US actor & comedian (1896 - 1996)
The Quotations Page

"The future ain't what it used to be."
Yogi Berra, US baseball player, coach, & manager (1925 - )
The Quotations Page

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, 200 A.D.[!], Roman Emperor, A.D. 161-180 (121 AD - 180 AD)
The Quotations Page

Since I was born during the Truman administration, I've been living in 'The Future' for a couple of decades now. We still don't have flying cars or atomic toothbrushes: but we do have the Web, blogs, and hundreds of cable television channels. And people are still the same maddeningly obtuse, refreshingly insightful, energetic, lazy, creative and dull lot they've been all my life.

I enjoyed reading those quips by George Burns and Yogi Berra. They both made good points. I think Marcus Aurelius Antoninus has a good point too. I've met people, off and on, over the years who seemed quite convinced that Terrible Things would make The Future unbearable. That's been a somewhat fashionable point of view for quite some time now.

Sure, we've got problems. But that's nothing new. Plato wrote about Socrates' concerns about a dangerous new information technology, a plague swept the Roman Empire while Marcus Aurelius was Emperor, and a thousand years ago half of my ancestors were enduring raids from the other half.

And yet, we're still here.

I don't think I'm complacent about what hasn't happened yet: but I don't think getting jittery makes sense, either.

Related posts:

• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (August 25, 2009)
• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Groundbreaking at Spaceport America: World's First Purpose-Built Commercial Spaceport"
  (June 20, 2009)
• " 'House of the Future' - Another One, this Time in Brussels"
  (June 7, 2008)
• "Cities of the Will be that Was"
  (June 22, 2009)