Love Letter 24: The Future

Karin Strom
Posted January 28, 2014 in More

karinstrom

It’s seldom the big, conspicuous things that change our lives and make up the future. The devil is in the details, and our lives change from inside out, not the other way around. Just think back 100 years. In 1914 there were already cars, skyscrapers and airplanes – just not as many. Even the way people dressed was according to today’s fashion. If you look at a picture from this era, you can pick any random guy in the shot and it looks like he just walked out of an ad for a Swedish fashion brand like Hope, Oscar Jacobsson, Whyred, Filippa K – or for that matter, just stumbled out from a late bartender shift at Maison Premiere in Williamsburg, NY.

When we imagine the future to be all about crazy buildings and futuristic flying cars, we are getting it completely wrong. Think about it – what has really been revolutionary in the last 100 years, or even the last 25? Yup, you guessed it – information and telecom technology. Things that are seemingly not conspicuous at all, but hidden in tiny devices small enough to be carried around in our pockets.

I have sometimes asked myself that most modern of questions – if I had to choose between the internet or mobile phone technology, which one would I pick? It’s an impossible decision. I can’t imagine my personal life without spontaneous nights on the town, intriguing eavesdropping in the subway or life-altering text messages. (How did people become romantically involved before the invention of texting? It must be the most revolutionary thing to happen to amorous adventures since alcohol.) On the other hand, I can no longer envision a world where I can’t google everything from old classmates to the gender distribution of India’s parliament, or electronically transfer money to a friend via online banking, or instantly access new music and film releases from the comfort of my home.

I need internet and mobile phone technology in my everyday life for both professional and private reasons. And the future is going to bring things we don’t even know that we need yet. In 25 years, people are going to say ‘oh my God, what did people do in 2014’? There must have been absolutely nothing to do!’ Which kind of me makes me feel a bit hurt, and annoyed with these future brats, but there’s no two ways about it – that is how they are going to look at us. What also is disturbing is that these punks will be smarter than you and me.

James Flynn is a philosophy and psychology professor famous for his publications about the continued year-on-year increase of IQ scores throughout the world, which is now referred to as the Flynn effect. He found that an average person from the beginning of the 1900’s, scoring around 100 on an IQ test of his time, would score about 70 today. It’s not that our brains have changed, it’s that modern life has trained us in abstract and hypothetical thinking. And an ever-growing increase in the use of smartphones and computers will probably only enhance that further.

The only thing we know about the future is that you, me and the world as we know it will be old news to the coming generation.

But hey – it’s most likely they will think that we dressed better, at least.

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