Next renewal: the year 2032

[EddMarkStarr]

For my 67th birthday, my new driver's license just arrived by mail. In the State of Washington, standard driver's licenses renew every 8 years. These routine renewals of personal documents pass without much notice, but this time I'm aware that my "renewals" are becoming finite.

There will be that last driver's license for me - if not the one in my hand then maybe the next.

What will the year of 2032 be like?

In my lifetime, all predictions of the future fall flat because the emphasis is always on "stuff", never about people.
Just for fun, I found an old issue of Boy's Life magazine online and I've tried to enlarge it enough to be readable.

Let me know if the images disappear when I'm offline, they are stored on my pc hard drive, not an online image host.

 

[NotHardUp1]

The images appear to be persistent. I can see them.

Happy Belated Birthday!

 

[gsdx]

They're stored online in cloudflarestorage

 

[EddMarkStarr]

That's good to know! Unfortunately, when I enlarged the text it became fuzzy. I have to wear my booster glasses to read it, but that gives me a headache.

When I was in high school during the 1970's, I used to tell friends about my dream to be able to communicate with people around the world by sharing images and video.
But all my '70's ideas were grounded in the social-fabric of the United States that was unchanged from the 1940's.

Social conformity colors not just your actions. but even your dreams. If you guys could travel back in time to meet me in the 1970's I would strike you as a clone of my grandfather, in teenage form.

Nothing has shocked me more than the breakdown of social courtesy, manners and polite sensibilities.

 

[belamyi]

What will the year of 2032 be like?

Remember 2016?

 

[rareboy]

Brisbane will still be there.

Likely with the rrrzzzn army team participating under a neutral flag, like they will in Paris.

 

[Peloso]

Remember 2016?

That movie was set in 1997.

 

[Peloso]

Roll your eyes all you want everyone but I measure this topic in cats.

I figure I've got another 10 years give or take with my current cat (her breed is not known for its longevity). If my health holds up well enough, my goal is to be able to adopt another one (or two).

I have a friend who spent half his life cramming cocaine and processed food into his face, survived two cancers and a stroke and he's still going at 72 so I figure I've got a chance.

 

[belamyi]

Brisbane will still be there.

Likely with the rrrzzzn army team participating under a neutral flag, like they will in Paris.

They have been ready since 1986... I remember that song for the 1992 bid.

 

[belamyi]

That movie was set in 1997.

Yep

 

[belamyi]

That movie was set in 1997.

Yep


And this one in 1964

 

[belamyi]

Roll your eyes all you want everyone but I measure this topic in cats.

I figure I've got another 10 years give or take with my current cat (her breed is not known for its longevity). If my health holds up well enough, my goal is to be able to adopt another one (or two).

I have a friend who spent half his life cramming cocaine and processed food into his face, survived two cancers and a stroke and he's still going at 72 so I figure I've got a chance.

You mean you dispose of cats after their first lives, or you just use them during their last ones?

 

[Essex Boy]

I have to wear my booster glasses to read it, but that gives me a headache.

Are you still using these?

​

If so, maybe you should upgrade to the latest interplanetary model.

* * *​

I first became aware of the 1936 Alexander Korda film Things to Come aged about 11, when I saw a still from it in a library book. The latter part of the film is set in 2036. I was fascinated by the futuristic design, all shiny surfaces and clean lines. And the camp costumes! The still was this, or something similar:

​

A few weeks ago when I finally got to see it on the telly (after a fifty year wait!), the thing that struck me was that the architecture and interiors are in fact pure 1930s streamline modern (notice the chair). Buildings like that still seem to conjure up a vision of the future to me, even though they're nearly 100 years old now, probably because that's what the future used to look like when I was young, if you get my meaning. As for the costumes, our ideas of what we'll be wearing in the 21st century have never changed much at all. Look at almost any film or TV show that involves space travel and they're almost always kitted out in a similar kind of medieval/ancient Greek fusion outfit--Thunderbirds, Lost In Space, Star Trek, (not Blake's Seven though, they were more 70s glam rock).The Mary Quant swinging sixties look was the nearest we got to it in real life.

Someone has spliced together the building the city of the future sequence and the closing scene, with a modern recording of the score.

 

[Essex Boy]

^
Wrong clip. That was the trailer. Let's have another go.