SUMMARY

Football is not a game of mathematics. Ironically, so also is technological development. Technology is the key to the future, the springboard of poor nations and the bridge across the classes. Social, political, economic and scientific changes redefine technological changes and vice-versa. While some of these changes may be linear, major advancements may not only be geometrical but could sometimes be unpredictable.

 

It’s been rather disappointing, many agree, what issues we still face in this new millennium, considering how much our imagination has been stimulated through those Space 1999 movies. By now or so, we thought, we will have domestic robots that talk, pills as fast food, outer space vacations, flying cars and much more. Even now, some speculate cyber sex, smart cars, digitised smell in TV and cyborgs.

 

Having gone round our global earth and discovered that the “four corners” do not exist, will we look for new laws of physics? Will we revisit perpetual motion machines? Will genetic research give us amphibious children and chameleon genes for thought control cosmetics? Will biofeedback create schools for unborn babies? Will  “brainwashing” replace the death penalty and imprisonment only in the mind? Will aura simulation and synchronisation eliminate divorce? Will we be saved from syringes? Will airports have trolleys with magnetic levitation? Will we need a new time scale? Will we turn our houses to “face” a new day? Will contraceptives become electronic implants, killing the undesired sex chromosomes? Will drilling for crude oil be primitive? Some of these technologies are already with us; others may now be theoretically possible. Now is the time to panic for the future is here.


 

GENETICS AND THE NEW GENERATION

It is the year 2025. You are test-driving your new VTOL (Vertical take-off and Landing) car around the new ocean-city and you come to a giant structure erected at the city centre. A bright inscription reads, “MONUMENTAL ERROR. Here lie the remains of a failed experiment in creating a soulless Adam. The 12,050 markings below indicate human lives lost to the monster.” Genetic engineering and cloning experiments are advancing at a scary rate that we begin to wonder what next?

 

Plastic surgery and face-lifts may soon be a thing of the past if gene implants to control ageing and enhance beauty are fully perfected. Soon your make-up kit may just be in your mind. Only a few visits to your doctor will be enough to implant you with chameleon genes and you’ve got thought controlled cosmetics.

 

Animal parts are used as aphrodisiacs and for other human inadequacies in several parts of the world today. Isolating the active ingredients and genetically fusing them with that of man could bring out “ the beast in man” and make him super human. Think of the possibilities of the human brain when combined with super memory genes from an elephant’s brain, or the aggressive instincts a boxer will acquire after receiving a jolt of Black Mamba genes.

 

Will cloned humans make the 100 metres dash in 3.2 Seconds? Will the Olympics Committee have to re-appraise the rules? Will we have babies attending prenatal  “schools”? What will a curriculum of biofeedback techniques do for an already Super- bred foetus? Will we not have geniuses at birth?

 

We all enjoyed Jack and (his little sister) Jill going up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Will we have to rewrite the rhyme as, “Jack and Jim” or “Jane and Jill”, when one sex becomes obsolete?

 

BEHAVIOR AND SOCIETY

“IT’S ALL IN THE MIND”

The common phrase used by “Shrinks” when they have no answers to your problems. That worn out cliché may well be the factor that will change our reality into illusion in almost all areas of our future life. Imagine walking into a restaurant and a sign reads, “Pick your taste-pill”. You are served the standard body-requirement meal and you add your chosen steak or French-fries taste-pill. “A good innovation”, some would say, “enough of those mother to daughter family recipes”. If psychology and parapsychology combine with the cyber craze will the possibilities not be endless?

 

Recent studies by psychologist Richard Davidson and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered that murderers and other people prone to violence have distinct brain patterns that can be clearly seen in images such as PET (Position Emission Tomography) scans. They also suggested that drugs and other therapies might change their patterns. Think of how much crime detection and control will change, if we have a device for Remote Electronic Visualisation of Evil, Aggression and Lies (REVEAL). Time wasted on arrest, interrogation and court proceedings may be completely eliminated. That street cop may just be your Judge Dredd.

 

What if “permanent” auto suggestion can make you “change your mind”; will we still have to imprison criminals? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to society if we could just “make him a good guy”? The death penalty may be unnecessary by the mid 21st century.

 

What about relationships? Will lovers go for their regular love re-charges at the nearest aura simulation and synchronisation clinic? This may put divorce lawyers out of business. On the dark side, world leaders and businessmen attending vital meetings may have to be “debugged” of any possible brainwashing prior to every meeting.