Five Things We'll Still Have in the Future

This piece was originally written for oletoday.com.   It has been reposted with permission.

While the future may be uncertain - at any moment the bombs could drop, your brain could be eaten, the atmosphere could be vaporized, the robots could take control of congress, nanoviruses could enter your bloodstream, you may find yourself deported to an asteroid mining colony, etc. - we'll still hang on to some staples of contemporary society.  We may just use them for very different purposes.  Here are some of the highlights:


#1: Microwaveable Burritos

What we use them for now: A delicious and easy to prepare snack or meal, densely packed with enough cholesterol and sodium to induce instant heart-attack and bleeding from the eyes.
What we will use them for in the future: Thermal and radiation insulation.
It's a known fact that the center of your standard microwaveable burrito is impervious to changes in temperature.  While the rest of the burrito's filling is scalding your tongue and destroying your sense of taste for weeks to come, the center remains frozen.  In the future, when we (or the robots) have destroyed our atmosphere and solar flares routinely raise surface temperatures to over 200 degrees, we'll need to come up with an extremely heat-resistant material for insulation.  There is really no better solution than microwaveable burritos.  Unlike heat resistant polymers or alloys, they can be cheaply and easily made and are non-toxic, as long as you don't actually eat them.

An infrared image of burritos fresh out of the microwave

Their density also provides another benefit of using them for insulation, and that is protection from radiation.  Since the core doesn't seem to heat up at all when exposed to microwaves, we can conclude that it is impenetrable to most forms of radiation.  This will come in handy when we have no ozone and the streets are littered with nuclear fallout.


#2: Reality TV

What we use it for now: Entertainment at the expense of others
What we will use it for in the future: Blowing a robot's cover
I don't mean to cause despair, when we are fighting the robots, they will be smarter than us.  They will also be much more rational, meaning they will avoid impulse purchases and be incapable of falling in love.  But we can use this to our advantage to determine if one of them has infiltrated our ranks.  If we suspect someone of being a cyborg or robot in disguise, we'll simply force them to watch some reality TV.  If they're sucked in and mesmerized by the shallow interpersonal conflicts, judges who intentionally go out of their way to be assholes, and shameless plug for sponsors, then they are legit humans.  If they seem unable to get into it, don't relate to any of the characters, or begin to criticize it for lack of content, then activate the EMP!


#3: Video Games


What we use them for now: Killing time, an excuse to limit social interaction
What we will use them for in the future: Combat Training
Right now, playing video games is probably the worst thing you could do to prepare for a war, at least physically.  But in order to avoid using robots or a genetically engineered trans-human race to fight our wars, which will prove more trouble than it's worth, we can use video games to create a generation of ruthless soldiers.  When you are playing video games, you are killing without the reality of killing. It teaches you that killing is something with no repercussions, because you are killing something that was never alive, and don't have to deal with physical realities of it, like blood, or the emotional realities of remorse. If you let it influence you too much, you become able to kill without thinking.  We will start kids playing first-person shooters around the age of five, and by the time they turn twelve (which will be the new eighteen, thanks to biotechnology and increasing levels of hormones in meant and milk) they will have no idea of what it means to kill - or be killed.  Combine that with intense physical training, some genetically engineered growth hormones, and some good old-fashioned (but still futuristic) eugenics, and you've got yourselves the ruthless soldiers of tomorrow.

It has also been noted that playing Tetris within six hours of a traumatic experience can reduce the risk of future long-term traumatic stress.  If we figure out how to utilize this properly, shell-shock will become a thing of the past.


#4: Nike
What it is now: A Corporation that pumps out an endless supply of overpriced shoes and athletic apparel, which will not rest until every man, woman, and child bears at least two swooshes on their person at all times.
What it will be in the future: An organization running a genetic splicing program to create genetically superior, "Nike" branded individuals.
Since its inception in 1964, Nike has been at the forefront of athletic innovation, designing products that will (supposedly) make you faster, stronger, tougher, fitter, and more appealing to the opposite sex.  The next step is to go beyond simply improving what athletes wear, and improve what athletes are.

Using recombinant DNA technology, Nike scientists will create test-tube fetuses with enhanced physical traits in their secret lab, located fifteen stories beneath the University of Oregon.  In the peak of their physical form, they will be able to run three-minute miles, make 80 inch vertical leaps, bench twenty times their body weight, consistently drain shots from half-court, and be physically incapable of exceeding 5% body fat.  They will be born with a swoosh on the forehead.  They will dress in only Nike shoes and athletic ware, causing people to believe that if they use Nike products, they too can be superhuman.  But they can't.  Life won't be fair in the future.

Still, it won't be all disappointment for John Q. Future.  Since Nike is an American corporation, these superathletes will be Americans.  This means that we will finally be able to cement our position atop the sporting world.  We'll finally be good at soccer, and maybe win ourselves a world cup.  We can break the Kenyan hold on the longer distances, break the Jamaican hold on the sprints, and impale foreign spectators with javelins.  Even in sports where we are already dominant will see a boost.  We won't have to worry about Japanese or Dominicans invading major league baseball, or Eastern Europeans with impossible to pronounce names invading the NBA.  And team handball?  We will destroy everybody in team handball!

Unfortunately for the armies of tomorrow, they will be so physically active and live such sports-oriented lifestyles that they will be incapable of playing video games.  This means that we will not be able to train to be ruthless killing machines (see #3).


#5: Perfume
What we use it for now: Hiding the fact that you don't smell very good
What we will use it for in the future: Concealing your presence from zombies
Because of the neural degradation that comes from, well, having one's brain eaten, zombies will be missing most of the higher regions of their brains.  What will be left will be the basic, reptilian brain.  As a result, most of their senses will suffer, but their sense of smell will improve by several orders of magnitude.  To find clusters of human survivors who were forward-thinking enough to carry shotguns on their persons at all times, zombies will rely on their sense of smell.  And the only way to convince them that there are no humans to be found is to not smell like a human.

Granted, you could achieve the same effect by dousing yourself in gasoline or bear urine, but at a certain point those options would make getting your brain consumed seem like a better alternative.  By coating yourself with perfume, you'll be able to avoid zombies detecting you from far away.  You'll be able to sneak up on them, instead of letting them sneak up on you.  And if any of you are worried about your masculinity, don't be.  Surviving a zombie apocalypse garners you way more man points than you would lose by wearing perfume.

The Crew of Spaceship Earth

"I turn my back to the wind

To catch my breath

Before I start off again

Driven on without a moment to spend

To pass an evening with a drink and a friend"

-Rush, "Time Stands Still"

"I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands

the ones I love"

-Pearl Jam, "Just Breathe"

"I'll love whatever you become

And forget the reckless things we've done

I think our lives have just begun"

-Muse, "Falling Away with You"

(Yes, I realize that this is an excessive amount of song lyrics. I couldn't decide which one to quote, so I quoted all of them.)

To all of my friends, the people whom I love, the people who have helped me over the years, who care about me, and whom I care about, you are the crew of Spaceship Earth.

Everyone is having fun and I can't join them. I would love for my circadian rhythms to be offset in a way that made everything so damn convenient, but I have a mission, unfortunately. I get to see these people for about two weeks, three at the most, and I can't even capitalize on it because of some stupid dream.

I rang in the new year with some of my friends from back home at a friend's cabin. I was up there for about thirty-six hours. Almost everyone else is still up there, crackin open a box of fun. We were joking that fun is actually an anagram for "Fuck You Nate!" That was thirty-six hours out of the total number of hours that the universe has alloted me to spend with them, and I wonder how few of those hours actually remain. I will always be a degree removed from the people I love by, space, time, sleep, dreams, hours in a day, degrees of perception, convictions, the speed of light, the loss of a spaceship, fears, insecurities, doubts, and my own damn fallibility. I'm back here in my room which is not my room, thinking about a dream which is not yet reality. Making hard decisions has never come easy to me, and again I have to decide it everything I am doing (or not doing) is worth it.

I am no Quentin, I am no Mizner, and I am certainly no Denton. As everyone else needs sleep to stay sane, I need my stupid dream in order to stay sane. I'm scared of being normal, human, I'm scared of going further down the rabbit hole, and I certainly can't afford to straddle the middle. Then I remember that I am human, and I will bring Spaceship Earth, and all her crew, all of you, along with me, because what was once a spaceship of metal is now a spaceship of the mind, and unlike metal, the mind is not bound by the laws of physics.

I will carry the crew of Spaceship Earth wherever my adventures take me, because you, my crew, are what has shaped me, accepted who I am, will be manning a Spaceship that transcends these limitations.

On the way up to my friend's cabin, while taking a side road to avoid traffic, I drove by the mechanic's shop where I last saw Spaceship Earth before it was just a brain in a jar. I'm still carless, so I was borrowing my mom's car. The engine temperature gauge seemed to smile at me and say "hey, well, I still work!" Yes, but I don't like you, you are not a spaceship, just a car, and a non-sentient one at that. Everything I love falls apart.

This last year was the year I stopped being a robot. I knew something had changed, but I couldn't tell exactly. It wasn't that I learned to not care about things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to balance things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to take risks, break the routine, live like an organic system rather than some fleshy clockwork device.

It only recently occurred to me that before this last year, I couldn't really emotionally invest myself in people. Yes, I cared about people, and yes, I was capable of normal relationships, but I was never willing to put myself out there. Now that I have, my life may be a lot more complicated and sometimes less enjoyable, but I'm living now. And this was all set into motion because inside a spaceship disguised as a car, everything resonated just right and molecules vibrated just right that everything started to make sense.

In my moments of despair I want to wake up. There is a specific date, (Wednesday, December 13, 2006) after which I sometimes hope everything has been a very lucid dream. The chances of this happening are slim to nil. But I still want to. It used to be for stupid reasons, so I could avoid breaking my foot or not be depressed or maybe cut my hair two years before I actually did. Now I want to wake up because I realize that if this is a dream, then I have learned a lesson. Since I learned to invest in people then I can be a person, and I really wish that I didn't have to be so damn late in rehumanizing.

But dream or not, this reality shows no sign of stopping at any point. In my reality, having a car-shaped spaceship's brain in a jar sitting on your bookshelf is not out of the realm of possibility. You eat microwavable chicken treats for breakfast, martinis for lunch, and garlic bread ice cream for dinner. We need to be prepared for zombies, robots, and mole people. It is entirely possible that Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, and Tupac is coming back. The future may not be the brightest it's ever been, but we will never get bored as we resist the robotocracy, evacuate coastal areas due to the rising, sludgy ocean, and maybe, some day, cruise around the galaxy in a real spaceship.

Until then, I will be chipping away at my task, a task that I have learned is in no way absurd. It's everything else that's absurd.

Say Hello to the 2010's!

"It's a far cry from the world we thought we'd inherit

It's a far cry from the way we thought we'd share it

You can almost feel the current flowing

You can almost see the circuits blowing"

-Rush, "Far Cry"

Supposedly because I fit into the demographic of their readership, Paste Magazine sent me a free copy of their December issue. This is apparently a magazine for sheeplike hipsters who do not have access to The Box, or any real friends, for that matter. From what I can tell, this is a magazine that teaches hipsters what culture to like so that they can befriend other hipsters with their favorable opinions towards Grizzly Bear and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Anyway, the feature article of this issue was "The Best of a Decade." For some reason, it wasn't until I read this magazine cover that I realized that a decade has just come to an end.

And that makes me realize that there will inevitably be some nostalgia associated with this decade.

I wonder what will be remembered for nostalgia and what will be forgotten. I also wonder what will be remembered as its defining attribute. The 20's had speakeasies and flappers, the 30's had lots of poor, unemployed people, the 40's had victory gardens and racist propaganda, the 50's had housewives, the 60's had hippies, the 70's had big hair, prog, and Watergate, the 80's had one hit wonders and neon everything, and the 90's had grunge. Nothing else from these decades is of any consequence in the eyes of nostalgia. The 00's (aughts, naughts, aughties?) don't have a whole lot of good points for nostalgia. It will probably be remembered for stupid internet memes, the proliferation of cellphones, and shitty mainstream hip-hop. Green Day could also sneak in, potentially.

But I won't try to summarize the decade, I won't try to pick out "best of's." That is pointless for me to undertake because I was only really old enough to be fully aware of the last half, and because I am no voice of the masses, seeing as my favorite band is Weather Report and I was the only person who didn't seem to like "My Humps." (Although, I will say that The Mars Volta's "De-Loused in the Comatorium" would probably get my vote for best album of the decade, and Donnie Darko for best film. I'm probably wrong though.) Instead, I'm going to speculate on what could (but probably won't) happen in the next decade, the 2010's. (The 10's? the twenty-teens? The awkward to pronounce decade?)

Palin in 2012. It's a possibility. Her book, Going Rogue has only three syllables in its title, compared to Obama's The Audacity of Hope, which has seven syllables. In fact, contains a three syllable word, meaning that one word in his book title has as many syllables as Palin's entire title. If you want to win over America, you want to use as few syllables as possible. The words in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address were 76.2% monosyllabic, and America loved it. Well, at least the part that wasn't busy seceding.

Could she win? It's possible. She's folksy, she's ambitious, and America thinks she's hot! After 44 doughy men in the Oval Office, we need some eye candy. What about issues? America hasn't cared about issues since at least the election of William Henry Harrison, who ran a campaign that completely ignored issues, mostly to hide the fact that his policies included dying 30 days into his first term.

And speaking of 2012, this is also when the world is scheduled to end, according to the Mayans. But not actually. The world is actually supposed to start a new cycle, or a new age is supposed to dawn. This will probably be something like Y2k except even less based on facts, and will likely fuel some rioting. When the world doesn't end we will all feel a little silly, then go back to... stealing music!

The music industry is due for either a collapse or a major overhaul in the way it operates. With the increase in file sharing and free digital music downloads, record companies will have to change in order to stay financially solvent. The Album, the sacred cow of the music industry, will likely be killed and the trend will shift towards sales of individual songs in digital format. Artists will produce a lower volume of material, as everything will essentially become a single. There will still be people telling us that vinyl still has the best sound, and we will respond by telling them to make vinyl we can play on our iPods.

Which brings us to robots. Robots are another possibility. Now they do pretty mundane things, like our taxes and giving us directions in a soothing female voice. But soon they will be doing surgery, cooking us breakfast, flying our airplanes, and eventually, taking over our government. If they are merciful, they will kill all humans. If not, they will enslave us for demeaning tasks and amusement. Our children will grow up speaking binary. Kind of makes you wish Y2k had happened when it had the chance, doesn't it? But don't worry, robotocracies can be avoided. Just keep a brick handy at all times, and remember that they can read lips.

On the more organic side of things, there is the potential for a zombie apocalypse. While preparing for the world to end in 2012 is silly, it is never silly to be prepared for a zombie invasion. Remember, keep a shotgun handy at all times, stick together, and when in doubt, stay away from hospitals, churches, and law enforcement buildings. Have long and short term survival plans, and be prepared to fend off both scufflers and ragers. See you for the rebuilding of society!

Then there's toxic sludge. The ocean will certainly not turn into toxic sludge in the next decade, but it will definitely keep sliding in that direction. Jellyfish populations are thriving, which is an indicator that ocean ecosystems are getting harsher, and our ocean's chemistry is changing as the pH drops. There is a trash vortex twice the size of Texas in the middle of the pacific. Sludge, radioactive waste, bio-waste, industrial fallout, and excess carbon are all accumulating in the ocean, and it will have disastrous effects. Enjoy the ocean while you can, so we'll be able to tell our grandchildren "when I was your age, we could swim in the ocean without it melting our skin off." Won't the future be fun!

China could also potentially buy us. We will work in sweatshops, and China will be flooded with cheap, inferior goods that have "Made in the West" stamped on them.

We will also not be going much farther into space. A couple more shuttles may go up, but otherwise, we will be sitting on terra firma, being sad that we can't float around eating airborne globs of pudding as the Blue Danube Waltz plays.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what might happen. Enjoy it.