Tuesday, 10 May 2022
Fifty Years
Imagine a time machine which only makes journeys into the future and cannot make the return journey. Another restriction is that it only operates in increments of fifty years. It is possible to stop the machine anywhen within these limitations but not possible to go back.
The obvious question is how keen people might be to take advantage of this form of time travel. Not particularly keen is my guess. For example, I imagined using the machine for a single fifty year journey to see what our street will look like fifty years from now.
Not very imaginative but it’s a start. Here’s the first problem though – I find I have no idea what our street will look like fifty years from now. It is currently a street of houses mostly from the 1930s – will it look much the same in fifty years?
Obviously the parked cars won’t look the same in fifty years unless everyone turns into a vintage car enthusiast. But the street could have any appearance from much the same to largely derelict with a road full of potholes and thriving weeds.
Yet if I look back fifty years in the other direction to 1972, the street probably hasn’t changed drastically apart from the parked cars, double-glazed windows and various home improvement bits and pieces. Yet for some reason it feels unlikely that the next fifty years will not undergo a more substantial change.
I’m sure some of this negative outlook derives from our destructive culture of political pessimism. In spite of the Crimplene trousers and rusty cars, I recall 1972 as a more optimistic time. Now there is a pervasive sense that we are teetering on the edge of some kind of major decline or worse.
Hardly surprising I suppose - with so many political loons trying their best to undermine reality. Weeds and dereliction it is then – unless we actually do something about the loons before reality deals with the problem good and hard.
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8 comments:
Yes, there was hope then; and inequality was at an historic low.
That pervasive sense that we are trembling on the brink of some major disaster is quite telling. There have been so many disaster scenarios threatened - ice age, nuclear war, peak oil, plastics pollution, over-population, global warming, disrupted climate, national decline due to Brexit, Covid, etc. - that their mythical and social control function is now quite obvious.
Decline of our national culture through immigration and the re-training of the middle class to be hyper-critical morons, though. That never gets a mention. Nor does the stupidity and cowardice of our entire political class. That's never mentioned either. My advice is to not look at those flashy gestures that the magician is making, but to look at his other, hidden, hand.
The sense of trembling on the brink of disaster is a regular generational spasm. See the Wikipedia article Fin de siècle for a view of how societies lurch from optimism to pessimism every so often.
The 50 years pessimistic view of your street is a windswept irradiated wasteland after the predicted effects of Brexit, Global Warming, Nuclear War and repeated Pandemics all come true.
The 50 year optimistic view of your street is much like now, with fewer TV aerials, more electric cars and electricity too cheap to meter. No flying cars or jet packs though.
"how keen people might be to take advantage of this form of time travel"
And what might be the costs?
Not quite on topic, but I reckon the cars will look pretty much the same and all be within ten years of age.
When the car was first invented, they didn't know what one should look like. After many years of use and testing, they came up with a good overall design, but still created different makes and models with different characteristics.
Now they seem to have run out of ideas and all new cars are pretty much the same thing. That will probably prevail until someone invents a flying car or something
(A bit like the evolution of pop music)
I remember saying to my friend in class, when I was 14, that I had a feeling that I was growing up in a declining country. He replied that he did not have that feeling.
1967 and all that.
Sackers - there was also a greater sense of cohesion.
Sam - yes, although I'm not sure we would always relish looking at his other, hidden, hand.
DJ - or in 50 years it could be partly abandoned as millions emigrate to a warmer climate with a more congenial way of life.
James - the cost is no return ticket.
Bucko - I can see them being smaller and lighter, but apart from that it isn't easy to imagine how designs will evolve. There seems to be a determination to drive private cars off the road but it's an incoherent determination.
Tammly - if possible it would be interesting to contact your friend and compare your respective outlooks now.
Yes I could do that. Saw him a few weeks ago.
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