Lemming Tracks: My Take on 'The Future'

The Lemming ran into another one of those 'what the future may be like' articles. There's the usual stuff: and I didn't think it warranted mention.

Besides, I want to brag about what I've done.

I plan to be back in a few hours, with micro-reviews of - whatever I find that's interesting.

Now, about my stuff. Maybe you already know about this blog's link page for posts about 'the future:'

• "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different"

I started going back through this blog's posts in October, 2009, looking for posts that were about the future, one way or another. That took me all the way back to " 'The Future Isn't What it Used To Be' " (August 22, 2007).

I've been keeping "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different" updated since then. The two most recent additions:

• Robots (and waldos)
  • "Driverless Van: Nifty Concept; Apparently Works"
    (October 28, 2010)
• "Future" technology
  • "Yves Rossy and His Flying Backpack"
    (October 30, 2010)

The Lemming, as I've discussed before, is "apathetic" only in the sense that I don't keep up with the crisis du jure.

As I point out in that "About the Lemming" page: "Since my priorities don't even come close to the stereotype Starbucks-frequenting, Armani-wearing, New York Times reader, I must be 'apathetic.' "

Also, since I was born during the Truman administration: I've been living in "the future" for quite some time now. It wasn't quite as-advertised. No food riots, the coming ice age didn't, and we still don't have a helicopter in every garage.

Probably just as well, in the case of those personal helicopters. Can you imagine what a traffic jam would be like?

The Future: All Good? All Bad?

The Lemming isn't fashionably pessimistic: I've seen too many 'end of civilization as we know it' predictions fizzle, and know a little too much about the last few billion years of Earth's history to get all that excited about statistical blips from the weather service. More about that in "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture," another link page.

The Lemming didn't retain the unreasonably rosy notion of Progress that was fading in my early years. But I didn't buy into the 'and we're all gonna die' attitude that followed it, either.

I mentioned my take on Progress in a post about the Gliese 581 planetary system. (October 4, 2010) And discussed it in a post in another blog: "The Pope, Science, and Technology: My Take," A Catholic Citizen in America (October 30, 2010))

Change Happens

One thing I've noticed, over the last half-century or so: Change happens.

I'm okay with that.