I was riding around Salt Lake with my good friend Faris a while ago, looking for our friend Jeff's house. As with most human beings, we were depending on technology to find our way around, using GPS. We took a wrong turn, and the GPS immediately started rerouting. Faris excitedly said "This is the future. We're living in it. This is the future," to which I replied, "Yet gay people still can't get married."
Regardless of personal feelings on the issue of gay marriage (or abortion or whatever), the concept is still the same. We have gadgets and devices that can give us directions, we have cell phones that can work without a wire to call friends on another side of the country or the world, we even have spaceships. But unlike technology, the societal problems we face each day haven't changed a whole lot in the last twenty years. Did I mention we have spaceships? Machines that take people to the moon and take pictures of far-away planets? How does this crap even work? I plead ignorance.
I guess it's not surprising. Just disappointing. When people in the fifties thought about the future, I don't seem to recall any movies about societal change (with the exception of the liberal, communal eloi being eaten by the conservative, blue-collar morlocks). They dreamt of jet-packs and meals in pill form.
(also, apes in spacesuits)
And speaking of morlocks, what ever happened to time machines? I have my own theory on time travel; it's not gonna happen. Oh, I'm not saying it can't, I'm just saying it won't. My theory is that if someone in the future discovered time travel, wouldn't we feeling the effects of it already in the past? A popular notion is going back in time to stop Hitler from taking over Germany, but if someone in the future succeeded in doing that, the history books that have been changed in the future would certainly be changed by now, in the present. That means one of three things; either a) they decided to travel strictly further into the future (which is just silly. I mean, the dinosaurs might have come back from their home world of Hell and taken over), b) they're actually responsible for the mistakes in the world (some liberal do-gooder from the future travels back in time and accidentally causes the Kennedy assassination? I smell a sitcom!), or c) the people in the future have already thought of that. World War II was a tragedy that we wish would have never happened, but all the wishing in the world isn't going to change that. Besides, Germans have a bad taste in everything.
(okay, almost everything)
If I had a time machine myself, I wouldn't mess with changing history. All I'd do is go back in time and pick up a particularly hot cave-dwelling chick (preferably somewhere in the midst of the transition between homo-erectus and homo-sapien), back when women were okay with guys being misogynists and way before the government created AIDS, and I'd introduce her as my Russian mail-order bride. I'd also like to see The Beatles' rooftop concert atop the Apple Corps building in London, England, but I wouldn't bother trying to get them back together (for the same reasons I cited above. heaven knows I don't want to be the idiot responsible for their imminent breakup. haven't I caused enough damage for one day, what with crushing dreams of time travel?). Oh, and also, I'd steal a bootleg copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Yes, one can waste a lot of time imagining what one might do if given the opportunity to go to the past. What wrongs could be righted. What warnings one might give. What rare gems one might smuggle back into the future and sell or extort for a lot of money (see above; the Star Wars Holiday Special). But the best way to correct the future is by correcting the present.
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