Technology of the . . . Future!

I watched a Dr. Who episode from the 80's yesterday. Among the many hilariously 80's things that made their appearances, such as stripey men's pants and women's shoulder pads, were examples of 80's ideas of high technology. High technology meant multiple nobs to twiddle and dials to observe. It meant hilariously large keyboard keys and clunky portable devices in that off-grey color that looks kinda dirty. (And the keys tend to get stuck!) Today we can watch all this on our iPads and chortle.

(Not that I have any iDevices. I don't.)

In today's movies, high technology means touchscreens and holographs where you wave your hand around, and spiky 3D graphs to observe. It means keyboards with flat or no keys and tiny portable devices. But twenty years from now people will look back and coo at us: "Ooooh look at that widdle iPhone he's holding. Isn't it cute how he thinks technology means physical objects!"

Because by then everything will function on voice command. With a low subscription fee of 2Gb brain space per month, you can get access to our state-of-the-art command network. Say a command, like, "Open my garage," and it will get forwarded through nearby users right to your house!

And you know what else I predict? That instead of pretty 3D graphs twirling on futuristic holograms, we'll have ballerinas. Yup. That's right. The precise twirling pattern of the ballerinas will indicate, say, the state of the systems on a space craft. Future People will look at our graphs and say, "How inelegant!"

Because in the future, anything will be possible.