If you are interested (you probably aren’t) here’s a one hour ABC interview with me about ‘the future’ complete with five of my all-time favourite songs (they didn’t let me include rock music otherwise I’d have had ACDC, The Killers and The Angels).

http://www.abc.net.au/classic/throsby/stories/s2870516.htm

Clickable link is in comments below….

1. It was called blogging. It was hugely popular.
2. We used metal and bits of paper to pay for things back then.
3. People would dry the leaves, roll them up in paper and set fire to them.
4. Quite the opposite. The life insurance was in case you died.
5. You couldn’t sail across the ice caps back then — even in summer.
6. People would save up until they could afford it.
7. You had to type in a query about what you were looking for.
8. C-60, C-90, C-120. It must be some kind of ancient code.
9. We called them developing nations.
10. Marriage was contractual but with no rolling six-month break clause.
11. Oil? Yes it was cheap. Around $175 a barrel.
12. So you had to write out the amount by hand and then sign it?
13. Twitter? It was a bit like sending a postcard.
14. You could take pictures of your kids without permission.
15. Huh? So you actually had to show up in person to vote?
16. Yes, Belgium was a country back then.
17. It was a fixed household bill. You didn’t pay for it by the litre.
18. We’d all sit down in the same room and watch a single screen.
19. You mean that people used to read every word in a linear fashion?
20. Trade Unions you say. What were they for again?
21. At that time we thought that we were the most intelligent species.
22. Yes, both the textbooks and the exams were still on paper.
23. What do you mean you got lost? How can you possibly get lost?
24. Never mind the price. What’s the carbon footprint of it?
25. Have you seen the kids? Are they playing with the invisibility suit again?
26. Let me get this right. Some people had more than one house?
27. We had to travel to an office and all sit there for eight hours straight.
28. European Union? That was an amalgam of diverse regional hatreds.
29. That’s because the world was largely run by men back then.
30. That’s because the link with mobile use wasn’t proven.
31. No, the screen was only in two dimensions.
32. Is there anything the Chinese don’t own?
33. People used to stop work when they reached the age of sixty-five.
34. Indeed, the phone number used to belong to the house.
35. And you could read all that for free on the internet?
36. Mum, I’m suing you for negligence.
37. You know, emerging markets like Britain and the US.
38. Sure. We used to do other things by hand too.
39. Do you want to try one of those new sleep hotels?
40. What do you mean she failed? Then I want the school fees back.
41. What? And you could drive it yourself on the open road?
42. So each country had their own army?
43. That’s before autocratic government became wildly popular.
44. You can’t stay in until you’ve finished your homework.
45. We used to fly there.
46. It was called copyright.
47. We used to drive right into the city.
48. The Beatles? Never heard of them.
49. Someone just stole my medical identity. Again.
50. Cher is still alive?

Just been thinking again about a formula for the future (post March 7). How about…

Technology + History = the Future
(History = human psychology + nature x time).

Just found this. Check out the posting date below! (not my posting date above).

Happy New Year to you, dear reader! I hope that 2049 will be a productive and anxiety-free year for you and your family.

Today I read something Oliver Sacks wrote many years ago about a man with a severe case of amnesia. His memory was 30 seconds long. Sacks said the patient was “isolated in a single moment of being with a moat of lacuna or forgetting all round him : he is a man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment”.

It may be a bit of a stretch but this remark reminds me of our present condition. We see and hear everything from around the world within an instant of it happening but we are generally unable to retain even a hint of these events for anything more than a day.

We are aghast at what happened last year but then instantly move on to be shocked by new horrors. We seem to be completely incapable of preserving new memories and are then bewildered at new events, despite the fact that they have happened before.

I think this is what’s fuelling our present sense of anxiety and bewilderment.