Yes, we have big-screen TVs and virtual-reality goggles. We even have the same Pepsi Cola and Nike sneakers. But no, we don’t have flying cars or hoverboards yet. What we also don’t have is healthy hearts. Peaceful minds. Or souls.
Today, Oct 21, 2015, millions of people are celebrating the date depicted in the 1989 film, “Back to the Future,” by counting how technology has matched our imaginations and how brands are making brilliant campaigns for the fictional products in the movie. Everybody is so excited for the scientific breakthroughs and abundance of materials that we decided to march further in the direction of consumerism.
The movie was right about fancy gadgets, but I’m sure that in the 1980s, people in the theaters were thinking, “wow, life will be so much easier if cars can fly and I don’t need to travel for a meeting.” I wonder what they wanted to do with all the time saved by virtual conferences and faster vehicles. How about seeing your boss every weekend on the screen? Or flying your kids to their fifth extra-curricular activity of the day?
Desires surely push us forward and make more things possible; otherwise we wouldn’t have such a long list of what “Back to the Future” got right about 2015. But the price of possessing more things is that we have to work more to create them and to buy them. The film overestimated the pace of technological development, but underestimated the pace of our lives in the future. In fact, we have become so busy producing the gadgets that we are not really appreciating or enjoying having them.
If I remember correctly, people walking in 2015 were not staring down at their phones, because I don’t recall a shocked and curious 10-year-old asking her mom, “why are those people not talking to each other at the restaurant?” We didn’t expect technology to be so intrusive 20 years later that kids are saluting with their foreheads reflected by pale screen light at family reunions and couples are chatting with their own Twitter followers slouching on the same living room sofa.
And apparently, we future people should all be slim and energetic despite easy transportation and travel-friendly pizzas. In reality, about 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year, because of unhealthy food choices, lack of physical exercise and chronicle anxiety. While CEOs are leading Corporate America to pump out the next wearable Xbox 365 to eat our souls, they unanimously adopted meditation as their 21st century breakfast table ritual. Imagining the Alps with a calming voice telling you to inhale and exhale seems the best burn-out vaccination for you to work longer without the distraction of actual breathing.
Reading the comments online, I laughed at a serious debate over whether scientists had invented the machine to transform household trash into car fuels. I will not hesitate a second to invest all my money in the company with this technology. The point of “Back to the Future” was that people control their own destinies. Given the rate at which Americans are using up petroleum on the Earth, there is no doubt that in the near future we are recycling the residues of our consumption for the power to keep consuming.
hana 