What I Expected and What I Got

When I was little, I was told what to expect in the twenty-first century.  Here's a list of things I expected, and what I actually got instead:

* FLYING CARS - Instead of flying cars, we got "smart" cars.  They can pick out a restaurant, tell you when to turn, perfectly balance fuel consumption per wheel, and keep you alive and call for help in a crash.  That's all well and good, but they STILL CAN'T FUCKING FLY!

* THE TENTH PLANET - I grew up with nine planets in the solar system, but we all knew there was a tenth one out there, just waiting to be discovered as soon as our telescope technology improved.  We finally improved our telescopes, and instead of a tenth planet, we LOST ONE!  There are now only EIGHT planets.  By the way, does anybody else think it's kind of a creepy coincidence that Pluto got kicked out of the solar system around the same time as the color indigo got kicked out of the rainbow?

* THE FIFTY-FIRST STATE - We were all set to add that new star to the American flag, but it hasn't happened yet, and now we have states talking about breaking away from the United States.  Nobody is taking it too seriously yet, but I think there's a much better chance of losing Texas than gaining Puerto Rico these days.

* BUBBLE-DOME CITIES - Perfect climate-controlled environments.  Well, we don't have bubble domes protecting our cities, but we DID manage to lose a chunk of our ozone layer, which means that we're now LESS covered than we were before.

* RAY GUNS - Lasers, disrupters, phasers, death rays, light sabers...  Instead, we got drones.  I pictured a future in which soldiers wouldn't have bullets.  Now we have bullets without soldiers.

* WORLD WAR THREE - We all knew it was coming.  The U.S. and the Soviets would fire off their nuclear weapons, creating a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of mutants fighting for survival.  Instead, we got... the war on terror, a few Rapture cults, a bunch of zombie movies, and our biggest gripe with Russia is that they stopped being okay with gay people, right around the time we started.  I don't know what's real anymore.

* TELEPORTERS - Well, we don't have them yet, but we do have 3-D printers, which is kind of like a... well it's sort of a... okay, it's not the same thing at all.  I don't know anyone who has one yet anyway.

* HOLOGRAM TELEVISION - Let's be honest.  Television is dying.  Even with radical improvements such as recordable programs, clearer picture quality, and wider selection, it just cannot continue to compete with online video-on-demand.  Television will end without ever having been in 3-D, or having said "fuck."

* SPACESHIPS - We were going to have spaceships and moon colonies and Mars missions, and we were going to make contact with space aliens.  Instead, we shut down NASA, and start building a wall to keep human aliens out.  We also completely fucked up the education system.  Good job, guys.  At least we can count on deranged billionaires to keep working on the project.

* THE METRIC SYSTEM - Everyone in the future was going to be using the metric system because it's just so futuristic.  Actually, most of the world was already using the metric system, except for the United States, and I don't see us changing anytime soon, because it's just not practical.  Who wants to tear out all the road signs and re-price all the products in stores, just to make calculations a little easier to do without a calculator... even though everyone has a calculator?  Also, Celsius temperature sucks.  No one needs to know how close the weather is to the boiling point of water.

* LOTS MORE SMOG - There's lots less, and yet, people are more pissed off about how much pollution there is.  Explain that to me.  People are choking to death, and it's a mild annoyance, but a faint trace of gas that you need a machine to detect, and we're ready to start a riot.

* INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE - Esperanto?  Interlang?  Some other manufactured language to be "fair" to everybody?  Nope, instead, everyone just started speaking English.  Yeah, remember that really stupid language that was supposedly almost impossible to learn because its rules weren't consistent?  That's what everyone speaks now.  Who saw that coming?

* ROBOTS - There were supposed to be humanoid robots doing all our housework for us.  The closest thing we got is a rolling frisbee that can sort of vacuum.

* ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK - Well, we had a politically-correct phase, but it died out.  Now the only ones who use it are politicians, but that's nothing new.

* EVERYONE IS A SCIENTIFIC GENIUS - Instead, we got the Creationist museums, and an increase in the number of people practicing witchcraft.  (Not that I'm complaining about one of those.)

* WRIST PHONES - They were promising these things FOREVER!  And now, we FINALLY HAVE THEM............ right after everyone has a smart phone in their pockets, and nobody wears wristwatches anymore.  Better late than never?