The future sucks. By the future we mean the present, of course, because the data isn’t in yet on tomorrow or 10 years from now. (If we make it that far.) But considering things from the perspective of our younger selves, the future-present, it’s pretty safe to say, is not how any of us envisioned it.
When we thought about the future back then it all seemed so much more transportation-based in terms of hypothetical advances, right? Spaceships and hover-skateboards. Instead, we got dating apps where nobody ever meets and a Nazi reunion tour. What happened? Esquire’s resident Old Guys™ discuss.
Luke:
None of us anticipated any of the current signifiers of technological progress we take for granted now, like the depression computer in our pocket. Where did you think we’d be by now Dave? Living on the moon?
Dave:
I for sure thought space travel would be a thing by now, or that at the very least, contact with beings from other planets. And honestly, I had no idea that I would want to leave Earth’s atmosphere as much as I currently do.
The thing from The Jetsons that I always found most fascinating was communication via view-screen. I grew up in a time of landlines and Kodak cameras, so the idea of communicating via video was enticing. And now we have that! We have the ability to communicate via text or video with just about anyone anywhere in the world! And we’re using it to yell at each other. Technology is way more advanced, but people are still dicks.
Also, I guess, food pills.
[editoriallinks id=’bf0b7618-1cea-4d30-8f44-4ee2b3412dfe’][/editoriallinks]Luke:
That just triggered a very vivid memory for me, of standing in front of my parents’ wall-mounted rotary phone, probably calling a girlfriend, and longing for the Jetsons video phone to be real. It seemed like such a futuristic thing; I never imagined it would be possible. I still don’t even understand how old-timey phones work, so the fact that we can do this now is a miracle that I totally take for granted. By the way, it seems like that whole thing, FaceTime and so on, really just sort of arrived one day without much fanfare, and we all played it super chill. There should have been an international day of observance.
I am completely disinterested in space travel to the point of annoyance at any efforts to make it a reality. It will never happen in our lifetime, and whenever I see Elon Musk or whoever dumping tens of millions of dollars into testing rockets, I’m like, motherfucker, I can’t afford to go to the dentist. This shit should not be anyone’s priority in terms of spending at the moment. People are living in poverty, can we put the brakes on the underground train or whatever it is now?
“Whenever I see Elon Musk or whoever dumping tens of millions of dollars into testing rockets, I’m like, motherfucker.” —Luke
I am sort of skeptical about technological advances that do actually seem to be coming soon too. I do not believe driverless cars will ever be a thing. It will simply require too much of a cultural shift, and a complete rewriting of the ways we travel and think about travel, to ever be feasible on a large scale. Have you been in one yet?
Dave:
I have not, and the only reason I cannot picture it is that I don’t know where I’d focus my rage. When I’m in a Lyft and the driver is pokey or aggressive or trying to make an ambitious left, I silently seethe at them. But if it’s just a machine, I suppose I would have to turn my anger inward, which, you know, I have experience with.
Luke:
What about clothing? I feel like that’s another area – well-trod by comedians of course – that old-timey futurist stuff really got wrong. We pictured a future of sleek jumpsuits and instead we got cargo shorts and XXXL t-shirts.
Dave:
I think the last technological clothing advance was Hypercolor, the shirts that would change color in your torso’s hottest spots. So for like three months in 1991, everyone was walking around with blue shirts that went purple around the armpit and underboob areas. After that, we kinda just kept our apparel analog.
I also for sure did not think I’d be worried about some genius maniac 3-D printing a machine gun, but here we are. Didn’t you think we’d be past world hunger by now?
[editoriallinks id=’f7ae84ff-14ac-46bc-88d4-5b7a1c64537c’][/editoriallinks]Luke:
I don’t believe in 3-D printers either. Don’t ask me to expand on that. I am sort of surprised Hypercolor didn’t come back in the whole normcore thing a few years ago. Big time wasted nostalgia marketing opportunity if we’re being honest.
I don’t remember what I thought about world hunger back then. It seems like, if anything, technology as it applies to the production of food has taken us backwards in terms of health, considering factory farming “advances” and GMOs and such. That sort of futurism is probably going to lead to our undoing rather than saving us. I did expect a cure for cancer by now.
One of the factors that is probably holding a lot of things back is that we have so many of our Tech Brain Geniuses spending all their time inventing phone apps and rediscovering services and products that already exist, like buses, and hotels, and vending machines, instead of working on the damn cancer-curing flying car. Does that sort of thing piss you off?
Dave:
I mean, yeah, but then I pull out my phone and numb myself with those sweet, sweet apps.
What I do find annoying is this: A product like Soylent comes along, and it’s immediately marketed to like, people who don’t have time for lunch. Finally, a product for the person who takes no pleasure from eating! And nobody, as far as I know, is figuring out a way to get a balanced-meal-in-a-bottle to people who are literally starving to death. I know it’s not a lucrative market, but you’d think we could get a box of that shit down to Puerto Rico or something, instead of into the hands of some wealthy tech bro who doesn’t like tastes.
“I also for sure did not think I’d be worried about some genius maniac 3-D printing a machine gun, but here we are.” —Dave
Again, the bug in the system is us. You know how when you make a goal for your future, you imagine that when that thing happens, it will happen to a better, sharper, future version of you? Like: I will get that job, and when I get that job, I will be a different, more disciplined me. And then you get that job, and you’re still just the crummy old you. I think that’s what we’ve done with our advances in tech: We are at our imagined future, where we can share and communicate and bring this world together for once, but we’re still just us, so we’re spending our day looking for Pokémon and blowjobs.
Luke:
If you told past me about the brave new future of Pokémon and blowjobs, I probably would have imagine it being a lot cooler than it actually turned out to be.
Dave:
I don’t know, I just made this GIF of Mick Jagger, so maybe we’re going to be okay.
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