If you really stop and think about it, we live in an age of wonders. Our cell phones have surpassed the "Star Trek" communicators for function. We can access any piece of information we want in a few seconds by typing it into a search bar. The laptop on which I’m writing this article never really appeared in any sci-fi story, probably because readers would have thought it too outlandish and unbelievable. A box of circuits with a keyboard and a screen that can connect you to someone across the world and seek out any piece of accumulated human knowledge? Sounds like science fiction to me even now.
But that’s not it for our technology: we have Bluetooth, cars that can stop themselves when a sensor tells them to, airplanes that can hurtle across the sky with hundreds of people at hundreds of miles an hour, and so much more. And here’s the thing: I don’t think the majority of us know a thing about how it all works. If you hold to the idea of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” then we may as well be living in a fantasy land.
So what does that quote mean, exactly? In essence, what it’s saying is that if you can’t explain a technology, then it may as well be magic. So Bluetooth, that craziness that links my phone to my car with nothing but thin air? For me, that may as well be magic, since I have no clue how it works. Same goes for the internet — I couldn’t build my own, could in no way explain it to someone, so it’s basically magic that I use. And I would hazard a guess that the vast, vast majority of people who use the internet/cell phones/Bluetooth/whatever technology it is couldn’t explain it either.
Now, sure, there are some folks out there who can explain it all, but most fantasy stories have that one person who knows everything and can play with the rules of magic (think of a dead Dumbledore talking to Harry Potter in The Deathly Hallows and the Jedi who can appear as Force ghosts in "Star Wars"), but in essence, we are living in a futuristic, fantastical society that was barely foreseen in the wildest dreams of our ancestors. Not to say we’re a perfect society, not by a long shot, but in terms of sheer technological wizardry, we’ve accomplished some crazy things in the past century and some even crazier things in the past 30-ish years.
Face it: we’ve pretty much created the future. If we can somehow manage to work out the kinks of society, perhaps we could begin to move towards the sort of semi-utopian future imagined in all those old science fiction books. If knowledge is power, and we have machines that can place knowledge at a person’s fingertips in seconds, then surely the power of the normal person should increase. In a democratic society, more power in the hands of the normal person should only mean an increase in the effectiveness of a democratically elected government.
In the midst of such polarizing events as the 2016 Presidential Election and Brexit, which inspire such a broad range of emotions and bring up debate about every topic it’s possible to debate, I think it’s important that we stop and think about how far we’ve come as a society. Are we perfect? Not even close — there are so many things that we still have to work out. However, I think it is important to remember that we have created a crazy, sci-fi-worthy future. Now all we have to do is figure out a way to live in it.
