Enter A New Year

Well here we are, the start of a new year! If you listen to the media it is also apparently the start of a new decade. So what is in store for us in this first year of the second decade of the 21^st century? It would probably be easier to determine what is not likely to happen than to predict all kinds of new things. I know that may sound pessimistic but let's look at what we were supposed to have by now and don't.

Way back when I was in elementary school, I can remember the first computer lab we got. It was full of giant, clunky computers that basically had an operating system and not much else. You had to actually type in the code for the program you wanted and then we all sat amazed while a few tiny pixels on the screen flashed on and off in sequence. WOW! I remember the guy who was the computer tec genius back then saying that these machines would change the way we worked and that they would make offices paperless. Well computers certainly changed the way we work… but paperless offices? Nope. Not even close. I don't know about you but there is more paper around my house and home office, and every other office I've been in or seen or heard about, than ever before. So much for that prediction.

I also wonder where my flying car is. Weren't we supposed to be travelling around in hover cars by now? I can remember seeing an ad in a magazine when I was about 10 years old, showing a dramatic representation of a person flying to work in his hover car. Can't say I've seen many of those about. I had visions in my ten year old brain of flying to school in my cool hover car and being the envy of the guys and the sought after companion of all the girls. You can guess how that turned out. While I'm on the subject, I also want to know where my bubble house under the ocean is. Why do I not look out the window every morning and see tropical fish everywhere?

And what about those Space movies? 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Where is my HAL 9000 super computer? O.k. Maybe things didn't turn out well with the whole HAL thing, ('Just what do you think you are doing Dave?') but why aren't we travelling to other planets and exploring new worlds? In 2010 we were supposed to be exploring Jupiter. We barely still have the technology to get to the moon anymore. And what about the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman? Why can't I jump over buildings and run as fast as a car?

I can tell you one thing – the next ten years better show me some of these fantastic leaps of technology or I'm going to ask for a refund of my television and movie ticket costs!