Back to the Future Redux
Back to the Future Redux" by Oren Harari April 11, 2006
Since I’m no dumber than your average person, whenever I find myself in Hawaii on a business trip, I try to squeeze a few extra fun days. So last week, while taking a solitary hike in a remote area in the Big Island—nobody else around, trail covered with brush--I started to fantasize about what would happen if I turned the corner, stepped into a time warp, and suddenly found myself facing a group of Englishmen who beached their sailing ships in Hawaii 200 years ago.
Presumably, we could converse with each other, but how would they react when I told them I was from the year 2006? They wouldn’t believe me until they started to examine me, I suppose. Now my fantasy mind went into overdrive. They’d look at my cross-trainer shoes and my designer day pack and I think they’d be impressed. They’d appreciate the significant advances in engineering and materials science, not to mention the fashion.
But at least they could relate to those products, because they too wore shoes and carried bundles on their backs. But what would happen if they asked me how I got to that remote point in the Island? I’d have to explain concepts like jets and automobiles (and rental cars!) that carried me from the mainland to the islands to the hiking path in just a few hours. And what would happen when they reached into my pack and pulled out a cellphone? In their day, communication was a hit-and-miss affair, a letter that would, maybe, reach England after a few months, and a reply that, maybe, would get back to the original writer in another few months. How could I possibly explain that in 2006 I could punch a few buttons on this little hand held and talk clearly with their family members across the ocean? How could I possibly describe wireless technologies, or the supportive digital, mobile and service infrastructures?
And then they’d pull out my iPod. Right. I’d have to explain the iTunes platform, and peer-to-peer file sharing. Now that would be interesting. I’d help one of them put in the ear pieces and crank up Lynyrd Skynyrd or ZZTop and just step back and see their reactions (and would they even consider it music?)
My point is that we’ve advanced so far in science, technology, engineering, and design over the past 200 years that even though my English friends and I would speak the same language, we could no longer communicate. Our experiences would be too profoundly and “paradigm-ly” different. Inasmuch as the rate of advance in science, technology, et al continues to accelerate, will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren react to our lives the way I did to my mythical English sailors?
I look at my young kids and I think what great possibilities are unfolding in front of them and their descendants. Today, we’re all laying out the platform for a future that is completely unfathomable to us today. And if we can just keep from killing each other off, or screwing up the environment, or weakening the great free market system that fuels so many wonderful advances for so many……Ah well, enough daydreaming. Back to the future, I turned around and headed back to the trailhead and my car.
Since I’m no dumber than your average person, whenever I find myself in Hawaii on a business trip, I try to squeeze a few extra fun days. So last week, while taking a solitary hike in a remote area in the Big Island—nobody else around, trail covered with brush--I started to fantasize about what would happen if I turned the corner, stepped into a time warp, and suddenly found myself facing a group of Englishmen who beached their sailing ships in Hawaii 200 years ago.
Presumably, we could converse with each other, but how would they react when I told them I was from the year 2006? They wouldn’t believe me until they started to examine me, I suppose. Now my fantasy mind went into overdrive. They’d look at my cross-trainer shoes and my designer day pack and I think they’d be impressed. They’d appreciate the significant advances in engineering and materials science, not to mention the fashion.
But at least they could relate to those products, because they too wore shoes and carried bundles on their backs. But what would happen if they asked me how I got to that remote point in the Island? I’d have to explain concepts like jets and automobiles (and rental cars!) that carried me from the mainland to the islands to the hiking path in just a few hours. And what would happen when they reached into my pack and pulled out a cellphone? In their day, communication was a hit-and-miss affair, a letter that would, maybe, reach England after a few months, and a reply that, maybe, would get back to the original writer in another few months. How could I possibly explain that in 2006 I could punch a few buttons on this little hand held and talk clearly with their family members across the ocean? How could I possibly describe wireless technologies, or the supportive digital, mobile and service infrastructures?
And then they’d pull out my iPod. Right. I’d have to explain the iTunes platform, and peer-to-peer file sharing. Now that would be interesting. I’d help one of them put in the ear pieces and crank up Lynyrd Skynyrd or ZZTop and just step back and see their reactions (and would they even consider it music?)
My point is that we’ve advanced so far in science, technology, engineering, and design over the past 200 years that even though my English friends and I would speak the same language, we could no longer communicate. Our experiences would be too profoundly and “paradigm-ly” different. Inasmuch as the rate of advance in science, technology, et al continues to accelerate, will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren react to our lives the way I did to my mythical English sailors?
I look at my young kids and I think what great possibilities are unfolding in front of them and their descendants. Today, we’re all laying out the platform for a future that is completely unfathomable to us today. And if we can just keep from killing each other off, or screwing up the environment, or weakening the great free market system that fuels so many wonderful advances for so many……Ah well, enough daydreaming. Back to the future, I turned around and headed back to the trailhead and my car.
posted by Oren Harari at 7:50 AM
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