Where’s my Robot?

Where’s my Robot? I think one thing I should make clear right at the beginning is that I have not lost my robot in the same way I lose my keys two or three times a week. You see I have never had a robot but I was promised one! Promised is probably a bit strong maybe I should say it was implied that I would have one by now.

Back in the Nineteen Sixties, I had a wonderful vision of a golden age that was to come. By the year Two Thousand life would be much simpler, easier and more leisure time. We would not have to work hard as everything would be automated from the moment we woke up in the morning until we went to bed at night. We would be fitter, healthier and not have any need for money. There was a promise of one global community where there was no black, no white we would be one people living on one planet and only defined by the term ‘Human Being’.

 

Other disappointments

A Golden Future

By now I had expected that not only would I have a robot butler looking after all my health, nutritional, housework and hygiene needs but also that getting to work for my 3 or 4-day week would be easier. I anticipated that by the year 2000, I would be going to work in my flying car using clean atomic power as fuel.

If I wasn’t taking out the flying car then maybe just make my way via a jetpack that was attached to my back but no I am working 5 days per week, driving a Toyota Prius which is burning fossil fuel still (OK it is a hybrid and unleaded but it isn’t wholly non-polluting).

Prior to that, I was driving a smelly and from what I now understand poisonous Diesel Peugeot 207. Why has it taken so long for us to get fully electric cars that are charged using renewable energy? There are a few electric cars out there and probably more coming this way in the next 5 years but again why has it taken so long?

I think is probably down to money. I am not a conspiracy theorist but if I were I would not be surprised if wasn’t the big oil companies stopping progress with cars that run on clean fuel and yes I will say it, stopping flying cars and jet packs.

Space – The Final Frontier

When we looked forward to a golden age that was to come I expected to be flying into space regularly. Staying in geostationary space stations as big as holiday resorts and looking back on a beautiful blue Earth and space full of stars.

I also anticipated that we would be living and working on the moon with domes in which people had homes, growing food to live on and producing water and air independently. I don’t know what happened there. the last moon landing was on December 11th 1972.

Since the astronauts returned to Earth we have not ventured out with a manned space mission any further than two hundred and fifty miles above the earth. There is talk now of going back to the Moon and going on to Mars but it has taken forty-five years to get this far.

Evolution Of Man – A Better Kind Of Person

There weren’t many people I knew in the Sixties and Seventies that wasn’t Star Trek fan. Okay, it was fiction and entertainment but it broke so many barriers that were around that day. “Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.

“If we cannot learn to enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
― Gene Roddenberry

It is my experience that tells me we are nowhere near that day. I see on social media, in newspapers and all over the internet racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious intolerance. Not just in this country but it is all over the world and I don’t see us becoming a more tolerant society or becoming a global brotherhood of mankind but we are as separated now as we have ever been. I am not a negative person by nature but I do despair when I see what mankind is doing to itself and the climate around us.

Where is my food pill?

I remember watching Sci-Fi films about people eating little pills that contained a whole meal. you would eat one tablet and it tasted and felt like you had eaten a roast dinner, you ate another pill that was like eating apple crumble or pie and custard. that hasn’t happened. We do eat food out of plastic and cardboard boxes that have been heated by microwaves which back in the 60s was unheard of that may be a step forward. but again we are a long way off from the food pill I was promised all those years ago.

Golden Age

Will there ever be a Golden Age for Mankind? I honestly don’t know, I think maybe if we don’t destroy ourselves and the world with either a huge bomb or by killing our land mass and oceans with pollution. I hope that we will one day reach for the stars and colonise other worlds.

I hope that technology will become a reality where we can rid mankind of diseases, and food and water shortages. I hope that we will become more tolerant towards people who are not like us. I hope that we will eradicate racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other isms that separate us as a race of people. I also hope one day that I will get my robot and flying car.

Read More

If you enjoyed reading Where’s My Robot? (and Other Disappointments) you can read more posts by clicking here. I write about music, books, technology and life experiences.