The Future is Now

I've always heard that if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans for the future.  And I know I've given God some good chuckles over the past 10 years.  Ten years ago, I would have never predicted I'd be spending three years in Omaha supporting my wife through law school.

As I get older and wiser, I give less and less credence to people who claim to predict what the future may hold (i.e. global warming climate change, health care, economic bubbles and recoveries).  A perfect example of how horribly wrong a prediction about the future can be was presented today at The Volokh Conspiracy by David Post.  He linked to and posted portions of on man's description (published in Newsweek in 1995) of why the internet will fail.  Here are the two portions of that piece that David posted:

“Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.  Baloney.

Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you’ve got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames–but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past?”

 Wow, he inadvertently predicted exactly what the internet would be used for, with a few missing pieces that even Nostradamus himself couldn't have predicted.  David Post ends his entry with a quote from Kierkegaard that I had previously never heard:

The problem is life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards.

Say hello to my first tattoo.  Now comes the tough part: deciding which font to use and whether it would look better on my stomach or on my calf.  Decisions, decisions.

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SONG:  "Halfway Gone" by Lifehouse from their new album "Smoke & Mirrors". 

LOOKING FORWARD TO: reading "The Android's Dream" by John Scalzi, who is a sci-fi author and writes the blog Whatever (which I've conveniently added to my blogroll to the right).  The Wife found that it was in her school's library, so I'm excited to start it this weekend (since I can't golf yet.  BOOOOOO!!!)

THINKING BACK ON:  how few books I've read since college.  Weak.

GOAL:  Finish at least five books by 2011 (and write a review for the blog).