How cool is this!

Every Sunday night we try figure out a good family movie to sit down and watch with the kids, sounds super old fashioned but it’s not really, it’s just a way of getting Joel to stop watching YouTube tutorials on how to make spiderman suits, or that irritating nerd from gaming beaver, narrating his way through hours of video games.

So the last few Sundays have been the following: Honey I Shrunk the Kids (actually pretty damn scary and brilliantly done for being last century), Holes , Matilda and this past weekend, Back to the Future! We ended up watching both 1 and 2, during number 2 they actually go into the future for the first time, and when they did, this is when they went…

Thats right,  21 October 2015….they go to this very month! Like 2 weeks from now!

Haha i’m laughing like such a movie nerd right now but i was so blown away by the coincidence and it got me thinking alot about where we are now, nearly thirty years after its release. 

So here are a few cool little things i noticed about our vision of the future all those years ago:

Firstly flying cars, thats the opening shock scene of what the future had instore for us, amazing how little progress there has been on the automobile front, although with the invention of commercially viable electric vehicles, a big game changer is upon us and commercial self driving cars look only a couple years away.

Secondly when Doc pulls out a little rectangular device and looks  through it, picking up the facial recognition of people in the street, not very far off smart phones and existing facial recognition technology that is common even on your Facebook images. Bear in mind this movie was made long before the first commercial cell phone.

The glasses that let him see all kinds of information… google glass… spot on!

Marty gets fired by fax after he accepts a dodgy deal via his tv which skype, facetime or many other apps can do for you right now, its not even novel anymore. (oh and thats Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers by the way)

Then there is the iconic hoverboard, which very recently has made a bit of a buzz, people are trying to make one, but everything i have seen so far is pretty shit, nowhere near the movie version, but people are trying.

There are many other “not-so-novel-now” items, ordering food off a robot menu , intelligent fabric clothing, self lacing Nikes (wait thats cool, why hasnt that happened?)

But perhaps the most exciting thing, is the one thing that isn’t in there, Something that connects every human on earth, allows freedom of speech, freedom of knowledge, that removes barriers of communication, and allows collaboration on a global scale.

Its the internet.

Why is that the most exciting, because the biggest technological advancement of the past 30 years was not something we could have put into words then, yet we managed to create it anyway.

That to me is exciting, because at the rate we are going, with Artificial intelligence, nano technology, internet communication and collaboration, global awareness of important issues, who actually knows what the next 30 years has in-store? The chances are its something we cant even imagine right now. Sure there is a chance these things might be used for the wrong reasons, and there is always the chance we are going to self destruct over religion or power mongering, but i believe most of us want to live in a peaceful world, we want equality, we want health and longevity, we want to live, and the more we are able to drown out the media, connect to a common understanding, and leave the trouble makers behind. 

Lack of education, media manipulation and propaganda stand in the way of a truly democratic world. The internet can solve both of those. The historical times of power limited to a few is coming to an end, when two guys think up an idea like Google, and within a few years are solving the worlds biggest problems, or a guy like Elon Musk who single handedly has taken on saving the planet’s need for fossil fuel and immigration to space, at the same time….you know we live in exciting times.

We have problems to solve. We are not born equal, and we are not the same, but nobody deserves to be treated differently, everyone deserves a fair shot at life, and I think that is where we are headed. Its easier than ever to start a business, become an artist of any kind, to learn things or understand why. The barriers to entry are lower than ever before. People from all across the planet unite on common interests, strangers will help you raise capital for almost nothing in return, my late wife’s experimental treatment (refused by medical aid despite being the only possible cure) was paid for with crowd funding. Before the internet she would have had no choice in how she left this world, it would have been in pain and left us with huge regret. The Internet is allowing people to side step traditional control and achieve things that we could never have done before.

Conversely its harder than ever before for governments to get away with murder, they still do, but its getting harder every day. A simple cellphone video has the ability to go viral in minutes. Whistle blowers like Edward Snowden are hero’s to some even if his own goverment doesnt think so. there are always two sides to the truth, at least you get to see both now, and decide which is the lessor of two evils. you have the power, whether you realise it or not. the world might look like a shit storm right now, but bear in mind stuff like this has been happening for centuries, we are just more aware of it now, on a global scale. we are waking up. looking around, and for the first time, hearing each others voices from across the planet. That has never happened before. You are living in a time that will define the future like never before. in this radically changing landscape of information, and technology.

We need a new moral code that unites us as people of earth, not separates them for their differences. We need tolerance, understanding and respect for each others beliefs, understanding that we have far more in common than what separates us. We must stop fighting over what happens after we die, and focus on living well while we are here. We need a platform that takes the power back from corrupted governments, banks and corporations and has the strength to lead capitalism in a direction that benefits the whole world, not just a few. We need to be informed and act as one species. We need transparency.

Bring on the future. I want age reversing, i want an end to poverty and world hunger. i want wave pools that look like Pipeline but have soft foamy bottoms, i want to upload my conciousness to artificial body so i can clone myself and be in 15 places in one time. i want space exploration. above all i want peace. i want to be a species (not a race, or a nationality) that is intelligent and worthy of colonizing space, that cares for all of it’s planet. not the mixed up, racially divided, proud, greedy, individuals we are now. We have to fix that.

So bring on the future. 

P.S Check out my curation page , Its A Rad World , it’s the best of the Internet and stuff that gets me super excited about the future. No negative crap. http://www.scoop.it/t/its-a-man-s-world