40 Years in the Future

By James R. Berry

IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.

The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated. Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off.

Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you slide beneath the dome of your destination city. Your car decelerates and heads for an outer-core office building where you’ll meet your colleagues. After you get out, the vehicle parks itself in a convenient municipal garage to await your return. Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another.

With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million, 2008 transportation is among the most important factors keeping the economy running smoothly. Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers. Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes.

A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets.

Homes in Mi’s 80th year are practically self-maintaining. Electrostatic precipitators clean the air and climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels. Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores. New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.

Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules, which can be attached speedily in the configuration that best suits the homeowner. Once the foundation is laid, attaching the modules to make up a two- or three-bedroom house is a job that doesn’t take more than a day. Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family. A typical wedding present for the 21st century newlyweds is a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.

Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.

The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.

Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.

Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.

Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested. When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments—on the average, about two hours of home study a day.

Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape _ * libraries. In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term.

Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.

TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions. In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge. Best-selling books are on TV tape and can be borrowed or rented from tape libraries.

A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails.

Another vacation is a stay < on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt.

While city life in 2008 has changed greatly, the farm has altered even more. Farmers are business executives running operations as automated as factories. TV scanners monitor tractors and other equipment computer programmed to plow, harrow and harvest. Wires imbedded in the ground send control signals to the machines. Computers also keep track of yields-, fertilization, soil composition and other factors influencing crops. At the beginning of each year, a print-out tells the farmer what to plant where, how much to fertilize and how much yield he can expect.

Farming isn't confined to land. Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats. It also is cheap; families can have steak-like meals twice a day without feeling a budget pinch. Areas in bays or close to shore have been turned into shrimp, lobster, clam and other shellfish ranches, like the cattle spreads of yesteryear.

Medical research has guaranteed that most babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives. Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, they can be replaced with artificial organs.

Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a diagnostic chair for a minute or two, then receiving a full health report. Ultrasensitive microphones and electronic sensors in the chair's headrest, back and armrests pick up heartbeat, pulse, breathing rate, galvanic skin response, blood pressure, nerve reflexes and other medical signs. A computer attached to the chair digests these responses, compares them to the normal standard and prints out a full medical report.

No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory. Everyone is able to use his full mental potential.

Despite the fact that the year 2008 is only 40 years away—as far ahead as 1928 is in the past—it will be a world as strange to us as our time (1968) would be to the pilgrims. •

The strange part is accurate. We reprint, you decide.

Bob H

I realize that many people have issues with drivers abusing cell phones, but try this one.

Driver Blames Speeding On Poorly Dunked Oreo

SALISBURY, Conn. (AP) ― Police say a man's excuse for speeding through a small Connecticut town takes the cake—or, at least, the cookie.

A state trooper who stopped the 1993 BMW says its driver, 28-year-old Justin Vonkummer of Millerton, N.Y., blamed the driving problems on an errant Oreo.

Police say Vonkummer told the trooper that an Oreo had just slipped from his fingers as he dunked it in a cup of milk, and that he was trying to fish it out when he lost control of his car.

The alleged incident occurred last fall in Salisbury, but came to light in Bantam Superior Court this week.

That's when prosecutors learned Vonkummer had been charged with speeding and driving under a suspended license—not driving under the influence, as a clerk had mistakenly noted in the court records.

Vonkummer's attorney would not comment. The case is pending.

Bob H

New Car To Be Powered By Anger

Car designers faced with the joint problems of increasing traffic and inner city pollution have come up with a radical solution by developing a car powered entirely by the driver’s anger.

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson was highly impressed by the power of the so called AngerCar™ as he drove around the Wandsworth One Way System. ‘I’m currently doing a comfortable 30 mph, Oy, get out of the way you stupid bastard, no 40 mph, oh no damn speed cameras, 50 mph, road humps, God I hate those…’

The owners of AngerCars™ are encouraged to display annoyingly smug and self-righteous stickers in their back window to irritate other drivers and thereby generate more fuel. Unfunny Garfield stickers, or signs warning that the driver has ‘show dogs in transit’ have also been shown to generate enough irritation to power the vehicles for hundreds of miles. ‘Anger is the perfect fuel for modern drivers…’ explained the Transport Minister, ‘as it is cheap, clean and endlessly renewable, no don’t block the yellow box you stupid meathead!’ shouted Ruth Kelly.
‘Oh no, not her…’ groaned the driver in the next lane.

However test drives in traffic-free rural areas have proved unsatisfactory, as the AngerCar kept coming to a halt. This design fault is to be countered with a specially adapted personal Navigator, that tells you where you went wrong in your life, the tragic consequences of your mistakes you made, and how much you would now be earning if you hadn’t been so stupid.

Bob H

Another problem the baby boomer is going to have to deal with as he grows older is that of sex. The kind involving partners.

Many people in this age group are finding themselves divorced these days and they want to know how to begin a new relationship, and where to find one.

Others have never been married such as yours truly, and have issues about establishing a lasting, long term relationship with a woman, where forever lasts longer than two months.

So exactly which part of that do you find amusing? I find that it takes a lot of the pressure off when you’ve basically been obnoxious from the very beginning.

And what lady wouldn’t appreciate that? Guys are told early in life that all any woman is interested in would be a nice guy who has a good sense of humor. The male experience that this theory has been overruled by another one which applies more accurately in this case: “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

That’s because girls like nice guys with a sense of humor as long as they have twenty-two inch arms and are jerks. Pretty guys with huge physiques can generally be as dumb as a brick and treat women like cattle and they’ll still get any one they want. Standing over by the twenty pound weights, you won’t have a chance because even cattle can be artificially inseminated before they will stand with the likes of you. Not that I am bitter.

But it’s been a long time since you’ve seen twenty-two inch arms either. It was in the July 1988 issue of Muscle and Fitness, if I’m not mistaken. You’ll need to get yourself back into a gym to see that kind of size again, because many of your finer, modern day gyms contain photos.

And they also have mirrors. You may not like what you see when you encounter one of these. At your age you have the experience to deal with this kind of problem. You remove all of the mirrors from your home.

But while effective, this is only a temporary solution. You need to get some of that weight off your midsection and redistribute it into your chest and arms.

Of course, this plan never works. It should, because the redistribution of the hair from your head never fails to land in your nose and ears.

There’s no use worrying about that now because we have much work to do on your road to physical perfection. We’ll start by purchasing official workout gear, which we know will be official because it comes with a famous person’s name on it, like Nike, Adidas, or Perry Ellis, whoever the hell he is.

After we buy our outfit, the first thing we will do is immediately return it for a full refund, because we have no intention of actually sweating all over our new name brand clothes which we’ve paid actual name brand large government dollars with actual name brand presidents on them to wear.

Then we return to the gym to find that it has closed for the day. So we put our membership on freeze and go out for a double cheeseburger at the new Perry Ellis steakhouse that just opened in town.

Going to gyms used to be a lot easier than this when you were younger. You were able to lift more weight then, and your injuries came from actually straining a muscle, as opposed to breaking your foot when you tripped over someone’s cell phone or water bottle.

Women often face similar issues when they’re trying to work out. They generally appear at the gym in three classifications: 1) the young and attractive female who has to fend off advances from some future governors of US states while trying to complete a repetition, 2) the miniature Hulk She-Ra sized lady who is more compact and much more muscular than you, or 3) the woman of baby boomer age, who will sic those future governors on you if she catches you looking at that young and attractive female one more time.

Such frustration is often the reason that you’re fatter than you used to be. You’re so upset that you’re beside yourself, and together you both weigh more than four hundred pounds. At your age frustration has become more than an acceptable excuse for not being able to stay in shape anymore. And no wonder.

I mean, look at what you’re facing when you turn on the television. Ask your doctor about Cialis, Viagra, Paxil, Levoxyl, Epoxy, Riboflavin, and about three hundred other name brands. You’re feeling bad enough about your pathetic life, and now your doctor has more bad news. You feel yourself getting a headache, but then that damn Head-On commercial comes on the air.

It works out no better for the ladies. Even if your doctor okays those supplements you see on television, chances are the women aren’t looking for any four hour Viagra ride on Space Mountain anymore in their sexual notebooks.

So that often leaves boomers with only one alternative. Charge cards and hookers. Ha ha! Only kidding. You’re not down to that yet.

Your friends are not likely to set you up with a potential mate, because they know what kind of a person you really are. So a lot more boomers are turning to dating services.

In a perfect world, dating services would provide relationships which turn out like the ones do in the movies. Actors like Bruce Willis make movies with twenty-one year old actresses like Scarlett Johannsen, and Clint Eastwood’s leading ladies are usually around the age of Suri Cruise.

But this isn’t Hollywood. This is the real world. The Jessica Simpsons of the world wouldn’t give your kind a second look, unless you use the one surefire method on your application which is guaranteed to make younger members of the opposite sex notice you. Stretch the truth a little bit, until it is more out of shape than you.

For the guys, you are obviously at least six foot eight inches tall and a lean and mean two hundred and forty pounds. You enjoy moonlight walks in the rain, usually outside bars in a drunken stupor where you are trying to find where you dropped your car keys.

You like down to earth women( they don’t mind that you currently live in a hollow tree). You believe in in equal pay rates for women( because your unemployment insurance ran out three weeks ago). You also do a lot of volunteer work in your spare time( the police threatened to run you in for vagrancy if you didn’t get off the street).

Your hobby is studying US history( you collected all fifty US state quarters after using the money you received from the deposits from empty bottles you returned ). And your goal in life is to create a nice home atmosphere and to be surrounded by friends( you want to live in the Playboy mansion and be surrounded by strippers ).

Well, you didn’t lie, did you? Baby boomer George Costanza always said, “It’s not a lie if YOU believe it.”

On their dating service profile, ladies will always admit to being a size two, since they’ve been putting on a little weight lately. That’s because their television appearances have kept them from going to the gym regularly, and the last time they went they broke their foot from tripping over someone’s cell phone.

Ladies like a kind, thoughtful, and creative guy( the kind who can think of sexual positions never before attempted on a Craftmatic adjustable bed ). You are optimistic about your future( as soon as George Clooney comes around to your way of thinking ). As a hobby you enjoy trying many different varieties of international cooking ( usually all at the same time).

You take extreme pride in your appearance( you receive Botox treatment discounts from being a regular customer ). You love animals( you were married to a snake for thirteen years). Your goal in life is to create a nice home atmosphere and be surrounded by friends( you get your high school graduating class to help you to break into Clooney’s house ).

If you both can just be honest and fill out your profiles in this manner, you should turn out to be completely compatible. As long as you never meet.

You will never be able to meet. You will continue to correspond through e-mails or regular letters until one of you dies of old age. Remember, this is not the movies.

If you’re lucky, you will both be level headed, reasonable looking people in their fifties, with a few minor character flaws. Kind of like OJ Simpson is “overly aggressive.” You wouldn’t be human without a few flaws. Besides, hygiene can still be taught at your age.

Actually, members of dating services are getting smarter the more they sample the many online sites which are available. If you’ve tried a number of these places in the past, chances are posting a photo of Jessica Simpson or Johnny Depp under your name doesn’t work anymore. When someone contacted you after viewing that photo of you in the old days, at least you knew the relationship had a good chance to work because the other person was just as stupid as you were.

Once you get past that , you’re still young enough that you can enjoy a successful relationship. Through the miracle of honesty, forthrightness, Viagra, botox, and TV movies, even a nice guy with a good sense of humor can even have a chance at happiness. But don’t believe everything you read.

Bob H

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - Here's to better luck this time.

Vice President Dick Cheney is returning this weekend to the South Texas ranch where he accidentally shot a hunting companion two years ago. Anne Armstrong said Cheney was expected to arrive Friday at the Armstrong's 50,000-acre ranch.

"We have a wonderful quail crop, and he is a fabulous shot," said Armstrong, a former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain and adviser to Republican presidents.

It's Cheney's first trip back to the ranch since the Feb. 11, 2006, hunting mishap that sparked a worldwide frenzy of scrutiny and jokes at the vice president's expense.

Cheney shot Austin attorney Harry Whittington in the torso, neck and face when he pulled the trigger on his 28-gauge shotgun. The vice president later called it "one of the worst days of my life" and said, "The image of him falling is something I'll never ever be able to get out of my mind."

The shooting was ruled an accident. Whittington was hospitalized for six days.

Press secretary Megan Mitchell said Cheney will give a speech in Pennsylvania on Friday before traveling to South Texas, where he is scheduled to stay through Sunday afternoon.

"It's a private visit with no public appearances," she said.

Cheney missed last year's annual trip to his longtime friends' ranch because of scheduling conflicts, Armstrong said.

Armstrong said Whittington hunted at the ranch last year, but couldn't make it for this weekend's visit.

This has been a public service to South Texas residents. Thank you.
Bob H