When is the future?
I have lived long enough to have had a past. In that past, I remember there was a future. It was the future of the science fiction novels I read, and of the movies I watched. It was the future of the twenty-first century when I would be impossibly old. Now that I’m in the twenty-first century, I think to myself: this can’t possibly be the future. The future I remember was shinier. And the technology, although more advanced, was also more benign. People were more co-operative because the future was a shared adventure.
What I remember most about the future is the dissatisfaction it engendered for the present. I used to tell myself: nothing interesting ever happens now; just wait until … Standing on this side of those untils, that old present has a fresh hold on me. I listen to vinyl. I read books. And sometimes I write letters to friends I knew back when the future was so much more convincing.
