Are we hurtling towards our nightmares?
At Watford Junction Train Station, I was watching the TV on the platform. In the adverts, the feed was cut off and a girl appeared. She was pleasant enough to look at, not my type but I had no complaints. I don't think anyone would have had any complaints - perhaps that was the idea. All she had to say was that she was glad that we were watching the QNI(??) Network. It brought me to thinking, when was the last time I had seen something like that? It suddenly struck me, Blade Runner or was that Total Recall. As we crossed over the threshold into the new millennium, did we also pass another checkpoint on the way to some futuristic dystopia? We already delegate some of the chores of day to day life to computers and robots.
We can live for weeks or months (or years?) without breathing a word to another soul and yet, still conduct our business. A relatively new development is the ability to order pizza through the TV (as I experienced for the first time on Saturday). Have we started down that "well documented" path towards machine controlled humans or dirty planet (don't even go there) or post apocalypse. Any way you look at our world today, we show signs that those infamous storylines are headed this way. We can see where we're going and where we aren't. Do we have the power to go where we want? I for 1 will be sorely disappointed to be living in a world where we are running scared from robots/aliens/ourselves.
What's that I hear you cry? "1984?" "Big Brother?" "Nothing remotely like the book happened in 1984!" Must you be so short sighted? Who's to say it will never happen or even, it hasn't happened already? We have CCTV everywhere. They can find out if you've been speeding by satellite tracking. We suffer "stings" more elaborate that anything Winston ever experienced. The biggest clue lies in the fact that we have learned to take what we hear on the news with a pinch of salt. Let's face it, are we ever going to hear the truth about what happened between the Chinese and US jets?
But, is this really the beginnings of a dystopia? I feel safe because someone is watching over me and that the police are taking an ACTIVE and not just RE-active role in law enforcement. We can take care of our invisible ministy of truth easily enough by asking the right questions! I hope!
That being said, do we really stand at "the dawn of the third age of mankind", can we choose our own destinies or are we destined to trying to predict what will come with varying degrees of cynisism?