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.
WHAT’S FOR CASH?
As the world “shrinks” further from a global village to a virtual community, what manner of currency will we use? Will we have surgically implanted bar codes for readily available personal data? What if this Universal Implant Device (Uid) totally replaces cash and credit cards? Will we deal in Uid credit units, thereby eliminating multiple currency exchange rates? Will this reduce inflation rates in the developing world? Will counterfeiting and money laundering be ancient? While the advantages are many, our socio-political and psychological environment may resist such revolutionary change. The required technology for this device is however here, so beware!
WILL WE BE NICE TO MICE?
Insecticides are bad for us, which we know. Some allow certain resistant pests to evolve. Some build-up in high concentrations in animals and may become dangerous to man. So do we stop the killing of pests and “talk” to them instead? Possibly, going by what an innovator in Nigeria refers to as TALK.ACTIVE, pest control by communication. The principle is simple. It stimulates or provokes a response or reaction that gives the pests the appearance of mindless automatons.
For example:
If a cricket comes into a territory, the owner makes a special noise meaning, “Get out or I’ll fight you.” This frightens off the intruder.
A honeybee (inside a house) will endlessly fly towards a lighted window in vain efforts to escape. Here the ultra violet light says, “come”.
Three “main” languages are being compiled.
The kinetic energy of TOUCH/HEARING (concerned with the perception of vibration).
The radiant energy of LIGHT (organs of vision).
The chemical energy of reactive molecules that are SMELLED/TASTED.
So for your rodent problem, don’t call the exterminators, just be a Dr. DoLittle and “speak” in ultra sound.
THE NEW “ DOOMSDAY PROPHETS ”
They have always been in the news. While scientists talked of the Antarctica melting and flooding the earth, spiritualists talked of an Armageddon coming at the strike of the New (Year 2000) millennium. Present day scientists are already tracking a good number of “planet killers” (small and giant asteroids) aiming straight for our world and they say there’s nothing we can do about them.
Their “counterparts”, religious zealots, already consider the World Wide Web (WWW) a tool for the new “antichrist”. It is not clear why but it could be because the letter W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet. Since it contains the numbers 2 and 3, it could also represent the number 6. So for all who bear the sign WWW.COM, it could well be invitation of the “beast” of the 666 fame.
COMMUNICATION, INFORMATION AND THE CYBER CRAZE
NEW BILLBOARDS
As we await the arrival of the future TV that digitises smell, brace yourselves for the billboards of the next generation. Cigarette ads that will make you feel the urge to smoke. Food ads that will make you hungry. A beer ad that subtly convinces you to head straight for the nearest pub or bar. Wherever you look, you’ll be “turned on”. Billboards fitted with emotional controllers will remotely send chemical, electrical or light signals directly to the hypothalamus in the brain to control hunger, thirst, temperature, aggression and even sex drive to stimulate these needs as you walk or drive past them. So keep away from those painkiller billboards they may “give” you a headache.
THE CYBER CRAZE
New computers are getting more minute by the day. We even hear of PC monitors worn over an eye like a monocle. By now, you are ready for anything, or so you may think. Thought controlled imaginary keyboards may be “clicked” to access a nano-processor implanted in the brain like the ordinary pacemaker. By the middle of the new millennium “reading one’s mind” may be a literary statement.
In sports, football coaches running up and down the side-line may be a thing of the past, if the world soccer body FIFA allows players to wear tiny receivers to get on-the-spot directives from coaches.
Will cyber crime include cyber-narcotics (getting high on bioelectric impulses)? Will cyber sex lead to promiscuity? Will science fiction movies like Total Recall, the Lawnmower man, and The Matrix scare people from using cyber recreational facilities? Will dreams be record able? Will employees work in a virtual office?
SPACE AND TIME
A NEW TIME SCALE
The most puzzling subject about the universe is the SPACE it occupies and the TIME it was created. These two “unreal ” quantities have puzzled man since the beginning of it (time). To make time real, we have adopted various scales. The second is the internationally accepted time unit. It is defined as 9,192,631,770 times the period of vibration of a particular type of radar radiation emitted by the isotope of mass number 133 of the element caesium, when it is excited in a suitable way.
A major scale in the definition of time is the day. That is the period of rotation of the Earth on its own axis resulting in day and night. The revolution of our earth around its star, the sun, takes about 365 days. For convenience, we have smaller groups of days called a week.
365 days = 169 days + 196 days, how curious.
It follows that 365 days = days + days
If x = 1 week (that is 7 days)
Then, (2x-1)+ (2x)= 365
Therefore,2x- x – 91 = 0
So, (2x + 13)(x – 7) = 0
It follows that, x = 7 or – 6 ½ days.
That is ONE WEEK IS EITHER 7 days coming or 6 ½ days past.
Could this mean that, duration of past time is a refraction of future time rather than a reflection? Is every coming week actually half a day longer than the immediate passing week? Do humans live longer than they think they do? Is our present time scale primitive and should we have a progressive clock? We may have to trade-in our present wristwatches for new space-time watches. So when next you say just a minute, be more specific.
FINDING THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE
All SPACE, whether parking space, aerospace or galaxy space, is contained in the ultimate space; in fact outer space itself is part of the Universe. The Universe is expanding as a result of a pre-historic cosmic explosion and therefore generating more space.
The question now is what vessel holds the universe and in what is the vessel contained and so on? This creates an infinite scenario. Like all infinite scenarios, it becomes an illusion. So, is the universe an illusion? The human mind is not well equipped to deal with the concept of infinity.
Consider two mirrors facing each other. An object placed in between has an infinite number of images on both sides. The numbers, ,,,,,,(and many more) could be termed cyclic because at some point, the point of infinity (POI), a continuous repetition is met. The origin of each endless sequence can be found at the POI. Do we then have a POI in the Universe to determine its edge or end? If so, where is it?
Suppose by some revolutionary powered vehicle, we could travel very fast and far, say, for a million mega-parsec (3.26 million million light years), towards the edge of the universe. And suppose we could achieve the universe’s required escape velocity. Would we be ” breaking ” through a glass-like barrier, seeing a mirror image of objects past and be heading for another “start”? So where will the POI be? Maybe where we started? From within? So is the Universe in us as we are in the Universe?
HEALTH AND MEDICINE
BODY PARTS
The next decade or two will bring great changes in the medical world. Giant strides in science will carry with it new health problems “and he that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils; for Time is the greatest innovator”, Francis Bacon.
Autosuggestion (the science of “telling” the body to heal itself) will play a leading role in the next decade.
Advancement in tissue regeneration techniques will discourage the use of artificial body parts. Regenerated hearts will replace pacemakers. The illegal trade of human body organs from poorer nations will be greatly reduced. DNA banks may replace blood banks, since every individual will have his blood cultured in artificial plasma using DNA signatures from previously stored swabs.
CONCEPTION AND CONTRACEPTION
Twenty-five million sperms cover an area approximate of a full stop size. It takes each sperm one hour to move (by tail lashing) seven inches (distance from the cervix to the fallopian tube). Relative to their size, this speed is comparable to a man running at a speed of 90 million km/hour or 25,000km/sec. This is about one-tenth the speed of light. According to Einstein’s law of light, this should cause time to “slow down ” for it and therefore live longer than we think. This recalculation of sperm life may improve chances of conception in future infertile couples.
A new contraceptive may bring relief to pill-popping women. Male (XY) and female (XX) sex chromosomes have different masses and so can be distinctly detected. A simple magnetic sperm-killing radiation device implanted beside the fallopian tube will not only act as a contraceptive, it can be switched to determine which sex of baby to prevent.
ON THE DRAWING BOARD?
Will the end of the fifth decade usher in radical research? When will the first amphibious babies be born? Will new cloning methods produce a YY (instead of XY) sex chromosome super man? Will we have Ghost Busters standing by every operating table ready to entrap any departing soul? Will suspended animation be possible? Will men develop the will power and patience in their future role as baby producing “machines”? Will we hire surrogate robot mothers? Will we find a cure for baldness, the common cold and the after-shave rash? When will syringes become primitive? The mid 21st century may provide us with all the required answers and more.
His miscellany is interesting but the jumble-mix creates room to ask the genesis and end of creative writing.
Malleable and diverse styles!
This indeed is an unauthorised pathobiography of micheal jackson replete with well thought reasons for his weaknesses. i salute the author’s attempt at immortalising micheal Jackson. His music lives on.
Thank you so very much for this appraisal. I’ll write again when I feel more rational – I feel emotional and outraged at the way Michael Jackson was treated. The commonplace, the mediocre, the unoriginal, become extremely arrogant in their definitions of normality. MJ was not a civil servant in the city: he was a creative being. His expressions of individuality were normal for a creative man of stature. I recall some lines from Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde ‘…to save what is eccentric and singular from being sanitised and standardised.’ No, our geniuses should never be sanitised and standardised. The world would be unspeakably impoverished. I recall that on the day MJ died, never having heard he was dead or even ill, I mentioned him to someone at a bookshop. I said that I saw parallels between MJ and Leonardo da Vinci, probably the greatest known genius. Leonardo da Vinci lived as someone who wanted to remain a boy, surrounded by adolescents, faced charges of sodomy but was not convicted. I now recall the statement that great actors never grow up. I think for actors I might substitute ‘artists.’ A certain guilelessness and distance from general reality attend those who achieve great heights of artistic creativity. Backwards and forwards through history we find people who were considered weird, yet who gave much more to the world than dreary, staid, humanity: Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo, Tolstoy and Lord Byron, William Blake Virginia Woolf, and in our world, Fela Kuti. I’m sure many consider Wole Soyinka eccentric, and why shouldn’t he be? What avoidable anguish MJ must have suffered. What boundaries he broke for humanity. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
Beautiful piece…