2010

Well I guess we are nearly at the end, I was going to write some nice concluding blog like many have already done, but as mine wouldn't look half as good as theirs I decided against it (nice blogs by the way guys :)), instead I thought I would briefly talk about an interesting book that I discovered on my bookshelf when I was boxing some books up to make space for alcohol (as one does...).

The book is called "2010" by Geoffrey Hoyle, written in 1972 and consists of a story which predicts what the writer believes the future will be like, what technology will run our lives etc. What amazes me about it is, although there are some things in it that seem so totally "Jetsons" and might still be a long way off (such as waking and watching a series of machines make your breakfast for you, automatic showers that wash and dry you afterwards and air travel of 4000 mph) they do appear to get some of their predictions right. For example buying groceries from a computer and getting them delivered to our homes (although we are not quite up to the stage of signing the bill with our fingerprints... yet...), computer banking, 'vision phones', digital books, electric cars... It is almost uncanny to believe that 35 years ago these technologies that seem so everyday to us now were in the same category as breakfast making machines and automatic showers... I'll have to drag the book out again in 2010 and see how good the predictions really are...