A brave new world

I didn’t go near the computer yesterday: no surfing, no music, no writing, no editing, no research, no e-mailing, nothing.

Every time I saw the computer, I was tempted, but… no, not enough to make me turn it on.

Why? Because sometimes you need a break, be it enforced or not. I decided I needed a day off and sat down in the morning to a M*A*S*H* marathon on the teev. In the afternoon, I went to my niece’s, um… third birthday party and in the evening, I read more crime short fiction.

This morning, I’m more relaxed than I have been in a couple of weeks. It makes me wonder about the Internet and how much stress it contributes to daily lives.

Why, I recall [insert image of an oldie in a rocking chair, gazing off into the distance] the days before the web explosion. When I picked up a telephone to talk to someone, or wrote a letter or postcard. There was none of the immediacy of today; none of this ‘reply now’ business.

It gives rise to the question of how much technology influences our lives and how fast. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s great, if in small doses.

I wrote a essay while at university on ‘Futurology’, that is, a prediction of future technology based on the evolution of current and past standards. When I look at it now – and I wrote this ten years ago or so – it is woefully inadequate. What I saw then for the future, is passé now, and my predictions were based on twenty and thirty years in the future from centuries past.

What does this all mean? Well, for sci-fi writers, it means their imagined creations are fast becoming fact and that will have to think harder on keeping the ‘fiction’ relevant, in keeping the fantastic away from the fact. It means technology is developing at a faster rate than ever imagined. What you buy today is obsolete tomorrow.

The consequences are far reaching in many arenas, from global warming, to bed warming. And it’s a constant source of amazement and intrigue for me; and also worry that I won’t be able to keep up.

Who knows where we’ll be in ten years or twenty? Or what we’ll be doing, what kind of toys we’ll have to play with, how fast communications can travel or on what, cars, aeroplanes, how you listen to music, watch entertainment, work?

It’s a brave new world every day.