THE FUTURE, OR MAKING IT UP AS WE GO ALONG
What will the future look like? It is a question that has exercised the minds of some of our greatest thinkers, from H.G. Wells to the person who made the Smash instant mashed potato adverts. But they usually get it wrong. For some reason, futurists are all obsessed with the same things, chief among them robot animals, flying cars and sustenance in the shape of pills. But how is anyone going to fit a Toby Carvery into a pill? Clearly, these people are not thinking deeply enough.
There’s not a pill big enough for a Toby Carvery. How are you going to get all those meats and vegetables into a pill? It would have to be twice the size of a frisbee. And what would you do with the gravy? Try to incorporate it into the pill or pour it over the top before swallowing? It’s the minor details these sci-fi writers often overlook.
I actually think our technology is far more advanced than we know. For example, I reckon they already have robots and computers that know what people are thinking without saying anything. But I think the tech companies and the authorities aren’t letting us have it, because they know it would blow our minds and wouldn’t necessarily be good for us. Because, let’s face it, a lot of amazing technology isn’t necessarily good for us. In case you hadn’t noticed, the technological advance has slowed in recent years, in that there haven’t been too many new developments. It’s as if they’ve hit a brick wall. But they can’t possibly have hit a brick wall, so there must be a backlog. There are all these mad patents piling up and at some point they’re all going to be unleashed on us. And when that happens, who knows how society is going to react.
Sometimes the sci-fi folk get it right. George Orwell’s 1984 seems to have got a lot of things right about politics and society. And Back to the Future came pretty close. In the second one, they nailed biometrics, virtual reality glasses, Bluetooth-style headsets and flatscreen TVs. But even they got flying cars wrong. Marty McFly was one of the great gilet wearers, 30 years ahead of his time, and you can also buy the self-lacing Nike trainers he wore in Back to the Future II. They cost about 30 grand. That’s a lot of money, but if we have another lockdown and I get a bit bored, I can’t rule out buying a pair.
Other futurists just make it up as they go along. Like Nostradamus. At the start of every year, some Nostradamus devotee will pop up and say, ‘Nostradamus predicted there will be a great shock in the next 12 months.’ No shit. Of course there’s going to be a shock. Chances are, there will be quite a few of them. And every few years, people say Nostradamus predicted the world is about to end. And obviously it never happens. Not that Nostradamus gives a shit, he died about 500 years ago. You can’t even hold him accountable for his nonsense.
I’m not sure about flying cars, they’d be too dangerous. It’s all very well having a prang in a supermarket car park, but if you did that at 50 feet up, you could fall out of the sky and die. If flying cars ever do take off, I bet you there will be flying cyclists holding everyone up, just like before. I can picture them now, hovering about, cutting in front of the flying cars, getting angry about everything. And then they’ll have to think of somewhere else for cars to go.
That’s one of the reasons why it might become quite normal for people to go to space, because of traffic jams. I certainly wouldn’t mind going up and having a look. Some people say it would be a bit dull, because there’s nothing there. But that’s ridiculous. Imagine staring down on your own planet. I can’t even begin to imagine how incredible that would feel. You’d also be able to check that the world was actually round, and that governments hadn’t been lying to us. And maybe you’d even bump into an alien life form. It’s a long shot, but I’d say it’s more likely to happen in space than Cheshire.
What would you say if an alien introduced himself? That’s a big question. Chances are you’d have all these big ideas in your head, about how the universe had changed forever, but be so overwhelmed that you’d start blathering on about the most trivial things: ‘All right? Nice to meet you. Erm, have you eaten? Do you even eat? I’ve got a Toby Carvery gold card if you fancy a trip to Macclesfield. Just say you’re a friend of mine. The four meats will blow your mind. You don’t get that on Pluto. But maybe give the gammon a swerve.’
Of course, aliens have already visited planet Earth. They made the pyramids. They must have, there’s no other explanation. I know someone who studies Egyptology and even he thinks the only explanation is magic. And because we know that humans can’t actually do magic, it must have been aliens. And they must have been all over the world, because there are pyramids all over the world: Africa, South America, the Antarctic. You can’t move for pyramids. There’s even one in Stockport. I don’t think there are any tombs in that one, although there might be a few bodies under it.
Do you want to know something else about the pyramids? There is a bigger time gap between when the oldest Egyptian pyramids were built and the most recent pyramids were built than there is between the most recent pyramids being built and now. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.
We live in a seriously weird and wonderful world, don’t we?