The Future Is Now

On the bus today I was not able to get my damn compass card to work, you know the kind I mean? 
So the compass card didn't register, I tried again but the bus driver, obviously in a bad mood, snarled at me to not worry about it.  I remember of course the good old days of cash.  In God we trust, all others pay cash.  Now we have to purchase these high falutin cards that we reload by machine.  This of course was all brought about to prevent fare evaders from cheating the system on our Skytrain.  So, they put in gates that can only be opened by the smart card, the new high tech system that our public transit provider, Transtink , which is to say Translink, blew millions of dollars on to prevent a minority of poor people, most of them unable to afford to pay the fare, from riding for free.  The fact of the matter is that very little money has been saved and the majority of those who were stung while trying to get a free ride ended up having to walk instead.  And in the meantime the transit cops, hired to enforce against fare evaders are, last I heard, still earning an enviable wage.  Does any money get saved?  Probably not.  But the cardinal offense of trying to get a free ride, especially in this era of unfettered, rapacious, greedy and winner-takes-all capitalism, is duly addressed and punishment is meted out.  Because our economy is run by greedy douchebags with all the social conscience, ethical awareness and moral compass of a pyramid scheme.

Oh how the times have changed and are a-changin' still.  On the bus today I was seated across from an aging Gen-X mama and her little girl who was trying to persuade mommie-dearest to let her get her belly button pierced for her seventh birthday.  Oh but the kid was acting on her ma like a pro and I'm quite sure she'll do very well at whatever slightly less than legit career path she carves out for herself.  She will probably make a great real estate agent.  Mom tried to persuade her to wait till she is eighteen.  She will likely get it done behind her back when she is twelve.  When I was a kid neither body piercings, nor tattoos, were ever even conceived of and getting your ears pierced was considered particularly radical, especially if you were a guy.  What do I think of piercings and tattoos?  Two or three words will give you a clue: dumb and self-mutilation.

Just fifteen or sixteen years ago on the sidewalk I heard two women discussing laptops and soft wear.  Though I was not yet computer literate I did know that they were not talking about comforters or afghans (and I ain't talkin' about the Taliban)  I was still only forty but already was feeling distinctly old and middle aged as I perceived myself as standing at the shoreline as one generation after the next came pouring onto the wet sand like a wave of the incoming tide washing over and around me and making me feel very small and very insignificant.

I simply shudder to think of how things will look a year from now.  On one hand we are facing a Huxleyan Brave New World where everyone is drugged, happy and obedient to their corporate masters.  On the other hand, we could have such an outbreak of anarchy because of growing social and income inequality that our technological advances in weaponry will get most of their play as they are employed to try to keep down the seething masses.

Where I really want to scoff and laugh is when famous eggheads like Stephen Hawking insist that our future survival will be in outer space.  This is such typical scientific nonsense with its built in arrogance formed around the mistaken notion that humankind is somehow detached from and above nature.  Regardless of how many robots and droids are manufactured to rule the world we will always be part of nature and our deeply collective yearning to be reunited with our Mother Earth will be such that it is going to eventually trump technology unless technology can somehow be employed to help harmonize us with our natural state of native humanity and I really don't see that coming, not now and not ever.