2010 has proved a little disappointing so far. When I woke up on Friday I assumed, perhaps naively, that we'd all be wearing tinfoil jumpsuits and feasting on food pills. Yet here I am digesting a very traditional Sunday roast while wearing a top I think I might have had since the last millennium and jeans that won't stay up since the belt loops are too narrow for the snazzy tartan belt Father Christmas brought me. But this is the Future. Arthur C Clarke wrote a book about it and everything. Shouldn't everything be shiny and fabulous?
Human beings are very keen on progress. They don't like change very much, but progress must be a good thing. In the last decade progress has brought us a technological revolution in the way we communicate. It's now possible to cram hundreds if not thousands of songs into a piece of plastic and metal smaller than a matchbox. One need never go without music ever again. Imagine the joy of never having to be alone with your thoughts, never having to think about anything beyond a superficial level before being distracted by the next track.
It's now possible to spew out every passing notion to a waiting world, no matter how private, hurtful or inane. It's now possible to pretend to have a thriving social life by hunching over a screen and tapping out more inanities to people you never meet, people you have never met. It's now possible to pretend to yourself that you're still friends with people you knew years ago because they clicked yes to your request but have had no contact since. It's now possible to snipe about modern life without going to the trouble of leaving your room to find someone to snipe to.
This is no Star Trek utopia with all races, colours and creeds getting along in perfect harmony (and wearing jumpsuits). This is a fractured world with death, destruction, cruelty, pestilence and harm on every side. This is the future is the present is the past. Human nature does not change. We're still the same selfish apes we ever were.
I don't want to live this way. All right, the sniping in splendid isolation bit is what I'm best at, but not the rest of it. I don't want to cut myself off from birdsong. I don't want to tell the world what I had for breakfast or what goes on behind closed doors. I don't want pretend friendships. If this is progress I'm glad to be a luddite.
So this year I'm striving for change over progress, ears open, looking up. If this is the future, I'm going to meet it on my terms for once.
