And my home, when I get there – that primitive cave of a place, little better than that domicile of Swiss Family Robinson fame – lacks so much. Is my dinner served up to me in pill form by a robotic house maid? No, it is not. My poor wife, who has not been helped by that said computerized help-mate, who has had to change diapers and bathe our daughter by hand, like some savage, is forced to cook up our dinner on her own. I would have half expected her to go out and hunt it down before sticking it into the microwave.
Okay. Fine. Yes, the microwave. Cooking without heat. The miracle accident that lead to the pinnacle of kitchen technology in 1945. That was like, I dunno, 65 years ago? Shouldn't it synthesize our dinner out of thin air and serve it up hot an ready by now? Why has this technology failed to develop? The best feature added in the last decade was the "popcorn" button. Is this where it is leaving us, at automatic popcorn detection?
Then, adding insult to injury, trying to watch television at night, after our Paleolithic dinner, just reminds us how far behind we are compared to what we've been shown in the past. No, not merely shown but promised. It was depicted as our given right as Americans that we'd have a comfortable and beautiful lifestyle by now. Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? Or the follow up 2010?! How about Buck Rogers, the Jetsons or Logan's Run? Okay, so Buck Rogers was the 25th century, but when does the lead-up to all those amazing gadgets start? The roots for self-cleaning houses and a perfect body clad in tight white pants should have started by now.
And the TV shows now, what do they show? All are void of any hint at the future. And all are shown in drab 2D. No 3D interactive imagery. No walking around and through the actors beamed into our homes. No smell-o-vision. It's like Philo Farnsworth just invented it yesterday, save for a few million colors on a flat screen instead of a tube using LED, LCD or plasma technology. But other than that, it's the same. Good thing I can record, replay and time-shift the shows that torment me on a little box...digitally...using a remote...without getting up from my couch.
Now that I am all worked up, I am gonna close this article and get on my laptop computer, which has more power than most of the spacecraft of the 70's combined, to vent to all of my globally spread friends and family instantaneously about how we've been cheated...wirelessly.
