Thursday, February 22, 2007
L'anno 2222
Sometime past midnight last night, I was reviewing the future simple tense in Italian, and came across a textbook exercise in which I had to voice my opinion on whether the following would be true in the year 2222:- All airplanes will fly as fast as the Concorde
- There will be no need for money
- We won't eat meat, only vegetables
- All citizens will be able to vote from home on their computers
- People won't go to school, but rather study from home
- Nobody will write letters or use the telephone any more, and everyone will communicate with e-mail.
Then, I noticed a string of 2's in the taskbar -- it was 2/22/2007!Wow, and this is the day before the release of The Number 23.
My answers to the above: "Non sono d'accordo" on all counts.
- Why would you want to fly that fast all of the time? Fly slowly, see more.
- Maybe not tangible, paper-based or metal-based currency, but virtual currency will be with us for a long time to come.
- It'll be much more expensive to eat meat in the future, but I doubt that vegetarianism will trump culture in that time frame.
- This is already happening in Estonia. But saying "tutti i cittadini" assumes that all citizens can vote, and that's not the case now nor will it be in the future. A two-year-old may be a citizen, but that doesn't give her the right to vote.
- SARS and its ilk notwithstanding, children will still leave the house from time to time to gather with other children in a learning environment.
- If you write a letter using e-ink on e-paper, is it still a letter? Or is it an e-mail transmitted via paper?
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
