Future Diary 1

While moving out, I found a picture of Tiger. It was a picture that my mom took on a digital camera, printed out on a bad color printer, ripped off the page in a tiny square and snail mailed to me. It was taped on my computer case for the years where I was in college and away from him, and it sat on the bottom shelf of a bookcase after he died. Without any help, without anyone with me, I took him to the vet and had him put down on April 21st, 2007. All four of my blood grandparents are still alive, and my three remarried grandparents are as well. I've never known a person well who's died, and I've certainly never been responsible for it. Putting down my cat was the saddest thing I've ever done. I was 23, and he was 20. We spent 18 years together.

In the past few months, I've adopted two more cats, both a year or younger. I will hopefully get over twelve years with each of them, maybe 20, like my Tiger. I will be 43 by then.

I suspect that touch/slide technology will dominate everything--lights and electronics will be panel-controlled, and everything will have an interactive component. We'll be able to vote for things on TV without having to call in, maybe even vote for large-scale things like political elections. Everything will be fingerprint ID-protected but still faster, more convenient.

I hope we have a new form of car by then. I want a more aerodynamic, more sleek design, that doesn't depend so much on specific user function. I still suspect that it will be miserable getting through Tysons, but it would be much nicer if we could guarantee that the traffic lights would function better in a thunderstorm. I think the storms will get worse--in the time that I've been here, the weather has only gotten more extreme in Virginia. We'll start having superstorms, and need to develop better materials to protect us again. Once, we used brick and stone to guard us from nature. I think we'll end up using plexiglass or titanium: something strong, light, reflective, and easily manufactured.

I wonder if America will have been invaded by then. I doubt it.

I think our financial system will be revamped. Because of the more advanced ID system, people will be able to keep track of their taxes and such more readily. Because of the sometimes ineptitude of the current generation, the next one will devalue old people, and social security will undergo serious reforms so that two young people don't shoulder the weight of one AARPer.

I hope I live in a two-story house in a bad neighborhood with a security system that actively punishes criminals on the grounds. The police will be spread thin and demoralized, and the world will be scarier, but third parties will create technology that make it simpler for the private citizen to protect himself.

I think women will be more equal and louder about inequality. However, insurance companies will start covering more childcare, abortions, and birth control medication. As a private organization, I don't think they can help but see that women will need medical attention for that kind of thing, and shouldn't be doing it off the books. Schools will pass out more condoms to fewer complaints.

But when I'm 43 and my kitty dies, I'm still going to fall onto my neo-linoleum floor and cry for a day. I'm going to take her to the vet, who's going to stroke her and pump her full of a different-but-the-same pink fluid. I'm going to watch her fight it, bite me, and then slowly her eyes will just lose their sparkle, their responsiveness. I'm going to be very, very upset, and maybe my android companion will have to drive me home. It won't be fair, but then again, it's never fair.

The future will make our lives easier, I think.