Anyone for Mars: A Tongue in Cheek Look at What Might Be, But Won't Be Able to See
By D A Ellis
Have you ever wondered what life will be like in a thousand years? No doubt everything we think of as high - tech today will be museum pieces, that provide a chuckle or two from all those new kids on the block. Will space travel be the norm, with bookings being made for a week or two on the moon, crater viewing? Over the last few years digital has taken over from analogue systems in all sorts of ways, including photography, music and cinema. What will come after digital? Maybe digital is here to stay, but will just get better. Today's cinemas now project films digitally, so in years to come will we be totally immersed in a realistic 3D viewing experience without having to wear glasses or have headsets on? Will going to the cinema be a mind - blowing experience, where we look at images that appear to be frighteningly real in sound and vision, just like going to a live theatre performance?
Will people be living a lot longer, well over one hundred. In fact, will one hundred be looked on as just getting on a bit? If people live much longer will there be a limit to how many children a couple can have, and I wonder what the population of the UK will be then? Will we have conquered many of today's illnesses such as cancer. Will things be cured that can't be today? Maybe people will look back on today as being very primitive. No doubt travelling time to far away places, with no longer strange - sounding names, will be cut. Maybe a ten hour flight today will be reduced to less than an hour, as super fast planes take to the air.
Will we still have shops, as we know them, or will everything be bought on line? If so, what will our computers look like. How much will goods cost compared to today? If inflation continues to creep up, and it no doubt will, then in a thousand years a pint of beer will probably set you back two or three hundred pounds or more. By then, I imagine people won't be using cash. Maybe everyone will be using a highly sophisticated card that contains codes for all our bank accounts. It could be one card for everything, with a back up we keep separately. This may include birth date, medical records etc. When something needs to be added, it could be downloaded on to the card with a new code. These cards will possibly have a memory of many terabytes.
There is a worry, now we are in the digital age, that some of our history kept on hard drives will probably be lost, as the drives stop functioning. With this in mind data needs to be re-copied from time to time to new devices. Will much of our history be lost to future generations if things are not copied in time, or if the device that plays the material becomes obsolete and the material is no longer playable?
Will paper still be used as a back up in case of computer malfunction? Vehicles will no longer run on petrol or diesel. I should think there will be very powerful batteries that will last several hundred miles on one charge. Maybe some will be capable of giving a few thousand on a charge. Most people will be in cars they don't need to drive by themselves. Satellite navigation will direct the vehicle after programming. Sensors will make sure (you hope) it doesn't hit anything. Will planes no longer have pilots, everything controlled from some point on the ground?
How will we cope with a large number of vehicles. Will it only be the wealthy that will be able to afford a car and will much of Britain's green belt be made into roads?
Whatever comes along, human nature will stay the same. We will always have people wanting to keep up with the Jones's and wanting the latest toy (gizmo) such as by then their own personal space rocket (the mind boggles) Anyone for mars?
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