the future is now

by KAREN XIE

But wait, there’s more

layout KELLY KIM photographer JESUS DEL REAL stylists ALEX CAO & ELLA HERNANDEZ hmua ZIMEI CHEN & JESSI DELFINO models RICKY MARTINEZ & NICOLE RUDAKOVA

"A Greater Wonder than Aladdin’s Lamp, press the button and there’s your station...” -

Zenith Radio, 1939

Ihear adverts like these in a particular voice — that tinny, white-man drawl, booming through speakers with deep charm. He lauds toothy smiles and croons of glorious Manifest Destiny. Oh invention! Innovation! Symphonies of bigger, better, faster, now, march towards inevitable biggest, best, fastest… but what of now? What is sooner than now? Let him tell you. He was the catalyst, it is only right. Let him tell the sordid tale of maniacal progress. Let him cry, “The Future is Now!”

“The Modern Miracle!” - Meadows

Select - A - Speed Washing Machine, 1950 In May of 1950, Ray Bradbury prophesized our untimely demise. At the end stands a lone house in sunny California, cheerfully warbling: “Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up!” The house will sing to wake an apathetic crowd, stamped away by nuclear war (no one gets up). She will remind of utility bills in the morning and draw hot baths at night. The bath will turn tepid, the bills will remain unpaid, and she’ll continue to sing for only the winds and the wild. Spectacular automation has become mere futility, but what does she know?

In May of 2020, this house has a name — Alexa, Google, or maybe Siri — and she knows far too much. Utility bill reminders are elementary. This new sentient being recognizes our voices, purchases, patterns, and uses them to sell more, recommend more, generate more of those terrifying Facebook ads. She knows us better than we know ourselves, and she is always listening.

At the end, the house lays among rubble and ruin and sings “Today is August 5, 2026...” Ray Bradbury predicts the world will end in six years time, but not by chance, no — we will do it ourselves. Our technology will no more outlive us than it will destroy us, and at this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised. Set the timer. Let the countdown begin. tick.

Technology used to be auxiliary. In the 1900s, we created the refrigerator to keep our food fresh, the washing machine to replace hours of scrubbing, and actually — the repercussions were good! At the start of the century, five percent of married women had jobs. By 1980, that number jumped to 51 percent. The household technology had become an engine of liberation!

But what is liberation now? Is it replacing snail mail with email, delay with immediacy, only to replace carefully penned musings with half-conscious taps on a screen? Today, we expect promptness, and we expect it yesterday. Look to Amazon Prime for proof. Look to the anxious spouses, bosses, or mothers — a text unsent within a foot tap and a half is impertinent, even worrisome. Unburdening has turned to burden. Deliberation has become delivery. Is this liberation?

The world has run out of patience, I presume. Even the clock hands spin faster.

“Introducing the Apple II, the home computer that’s ready to work, play, and grow with you.” - Apple, 1977 Sometimes, it strikes me that we have the entire world tucked neatly in our hands, yet, we choose to scroll… Sometimes, when I no longer wish to think, I type “netflix.com” into the search bar, and I blank with recognized relief. I won’t need to muster a single ounce of energy for the next four, five, or sixty minutes. “The Office” jingle plays, and I breathe a bit of my life out into thin air.

click.

Technology now consumes us. In 2019, the average teen spent more than 7 hours of their day looking at a screen — that’s half of our waking hours, viewed through pixels. Half of our conscious lives have melded into some pale imitation of waking reality, and it seems we are okay with it. This statistic was also pre-pandemic. We now hold classes and meetings and game nights galore on those screens… technology hasn’t just consumed us, it controls us, and we are nothing without it. I’d like to set an alarm to wake us out of this trance — let me grab my phone.

They call this the new norm, but that’s a part of the problem too. Within a year, we have normalized the premise of “Wall-E” — he is knocking on our front door. Perhaps it was necessary, but it came too easily. I wonder if Andrew Stanton is disappointed that we turned his dystopian warning into grim reality.

Look, my quarrel is not with the almighty screen itself — my quarrel is with our loss of self. Technology evokes passivity. “Sit back and enjoy” removes an element of effort from humanity in which we no longer have to work to stay in touch with the world. “The Office” will just play — I know. Yes, technology evokes staticity. It adds balm to the touch, mutes speech into rings, and shaves the peaks and valleys of exhilarating time into rolling waves of static. I turn on technology when I no longer wish to think.

When was the last time you felt truly alive?

“She’s on the moon right now. Where will technology take you?” - Dell Technology, 2020 I feel as though some primeval force is stirring, and he too will be made of the metaphysical, some binary entity of 0s and 1s. Rusty boxes of scrap and tin robot are distant memories — artificial intelligence is too vain for that, and we should know. We created him. He bears no physical resemblance to the Frankenstein creatures of lore, but Mary Shelley had a point. How can we create life and deign to model it after us when we don’t even know what makes us, us? This mystery of humanity is where both miracle and danger reside, but what if there’s not enough room for two?

But forget about that for now. Escapism is human, that’s for sure, and the big thinkers of today have capitalized on this. Virtual reality is here! And it is unfettered flight, a shuttle to the moon. I don’t doubt its utility, and I praise its virtues, but I fear the day life becomes an app store package, purchased from some nebulous cloud. Wall-E is knocking again. I feel as though the Earth is spinning faster with those clock hands, and there has to be some side-effect. I’m reminded of my record player, spinning even after the melody has died to scratches. It’s funny — I originally bought it to decelerate, whisk me back to the peacock blue days of Sinatra and Fitzgerald, yet I’ve found I get annoyed that I have to flip the disc once the music has died — Spotify just does it for me. The trumpets and tubas and great french horns come and go, but the record keeps on spinning. One day, Spotify will play what we want to hear before we know it ourselves. The Earth keeps on spinning and spinning and spinning.

Today is December 5, 2020. There are five and a half years left on the timer, and precursory alarms mean nothing to us. So spin on, clock hands. They say the future is now — but then what comes tomorrow?

The advert man is eerily silent, for the house has begun to sing.■

THEY SAY THE FUTURE IS NOW — BUT THEN WHAT COMES TOMORROW?