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Jasper, the old man from “The Simpsons,” once said: “MoonPies. What a time to be alive.” Jasper clearly saw something in this modern day that many people don’t see – the astonishing nature of technology.
Many believe that just because we don’t have flying cars readily available, the present has let us down. According to “The Jetsons” and other science fiction shows or movies, we were supposed to have flying cars by now. Thanks for the false hopes Ridley Scott, with your portrayal of the year 2019 in “Blade Runner.”
The closest thing that we have to a futuristic form of transportation is the Segway Human Transporter – which isn’t quite a flying car.
Sure, we have robots, but again, it’s not quite like we had imagined. Honda’s ASIMO, though it’s a nice little invention, is not even close to what Fritz Lang had imagined in “Metropolis.” We don’t want sleek, cute little bubble-headed robots, we want wrecking machines: Huge, skyscraper-sized robots that can protect the world – or turn against it – if Earth is ever invaded by aliens. We definitely don’t have these “wrecking machines” – yet.
It may seem that if we had the ability to time travel and brought back a person from the 1950s or earlier, they would be disappointed with the advancements that civilization has made. They would look at our ASIMOs and Segways and laugh at them. Even people who lived and grew up in a more modern setting are disappointed with the way technology has progressed.
I tend to side with Jasper on this one, and I say, “What a time to be alive.” Not only do we still have MoonPies, we have talking urinal cakes. The Wizmark Urinal Communicator was created to give alerts, messages or advertisements to its users. Now, I’m not a scientist, but this seems strikingly similar to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The future is here ladies and gentlemen, be wary of it.
We live in a world with IMAX movies that could blow away any audience from any generation before. With dimensions and picture quality so grand, people from the past would find our modern day technology simply irresistible.
Above all else, we’ve got James Cameron. That’s right, filmmaker James Cameron is bringing the future to the present. James Cameron is on the cutting edge of not only filmmaking, but technology in general. He has single-handedly created a rise of the machines in his Terminator franchise and sunk the Titanic 85 years after the actual incident. On top of all of that, Cameron stays on top of technological advances.
Between James Cameron, talking urinals and IMAX movies, it seems as though we are presently in the future. Let’s follow James Cameron and others into the future and maybe, just maybe, we might discover time travel – or not.
Joel Crabtree’s favorite science fiction movie is “Mac and Me.”
