The Future Awaits

Many have tried to predict the way things will be in the future, and here’s my 2 cents worth (which incidentally is now about 8 sen, or 8 baht, let’s not even go to the euro…) No. 6 will have a limited readership, but that’s just part of today for me.

1. Progress: People will realize that shows like Survivor and The Apprentice are catered primarily to service viewers’ desires to witness other people’s malice and confrontational conflicts, masked in some way to make it seem decent to do so, usually with the use of greed eg. a million bucks. Result: Viewers will eventually shed their inhibitions and go for the real deal, and all reality TV shows will close down, and give way to a market monopoly by Jerry Springer.

2. Progress: One day we’ll realize it’s kinda weird to throw out trash the way we do – stuff all this decomposing material into a completely non-biodegradable package, and then get people to stuff it in a truck which squeezes the whole pile, releasing on to the road and onto our nostrils what one of my friends calls “essence of trash” the same way you have essence of chicken. (Actually he called it something far more interesting, but anyway…). Result: I’m guessing the drive to multi-task like PDAs and what not, will allow us just to flush all our trash down the toilet eventually. It’ll be a little while longer before people accept multi-tasking the water-tank above the toilet bowl to serve as a dish-washer, though.

3. Progress: Centralization will hook all electrical applications (toaster, TV, air conditioning) to a central computer in each home. Result: Computer viruses can suddenly turn off your hot water while showering. The bright side: Your toilet will still work.

4. Progress: The ability to predict natural disasters world-wide will increase, and to save lives. Result: to save lives, the Malaysian government will have to announce a different, false location for the incoming disaster, because too many Malaysians are just so kay-poh (busybody) that they will rush towards the disaster armed with camcorders.

5. Progress: Musicians will realize that the basis of all their practice and effort is gaining more control over their digits, lungs etc. Result: Musicians will evolve and eventually be able to control things such as the rate of hair growth: there will be no bald musicians.

6. Progress: Higher education standards will bring psychology into schools and make people realize that students of certain boards to wear two badges is not only stupid, but a projection of inadequacy and insecurity by whatever idiot(s) who applied and enforced a caste-creation ruling. Result: The increase in local Viagra share prices will make more sense.

7. An interesting idea Beng Keat and I discussed is that since light travels away from the Earth to create an image of the way things are now, traveling faster than the speed of light, if it were possible, would allow us to literally look at the past. The faster you are in relation to the speed of light, the further back in history you get to see.