Haru no Ichiban
Remember Tomorrow's World ?
Halcyon days, when the idea of the future was exciting and we thought it very likely that things were going to get better.
How long ago that seems !
The change in our thinking about the future was really brought home by two things that happened yesterday. One of them was that a colleague got herself an IRobot Scooba floor washing robot. She said it was so that it could wash the floor while she works seven days a week, and I know she isn't exaggerating because we work together a lot and often communicate early on a Saturday or Sunday morning. But the excitement of getting her new robot was really infectious, and everyone gathered round to see pictures of the cute little sucker (she's calling it 'Isaac' - I-suck - geddit ?) And she told me: 'Trust me. This is the future'.
Weren't robots the future way, way back in the Fifties ? and haven't we heard of 'I Robot' somewhere before ? Oh yes, that was in the Fifties too.
Secondly, I watched a BBC Horizon program, presented by the appallingly childlike and cute Professor Brian Cox - does his mother know he's out ? - called 'Can we make a star on earth ?' It was all about nuclear fusion, and the punchline was that everybody interviewed is confident that we will actually have viable, economical energy from fusion by 2050 - some thought as early as the 2020s. That's only 11 years in the future ! I might not even be dead by then ! The end of the program featured this announcement: 'The energy crisis is over, If you want it'. And I remembered what it was like to feel optimistic about the future.
Nostalgically for my generation, the program even featured the observation that we are (literally) stardust. Sometimes I think back to the day Neil Armstrong took his one small step, and wonder how on earth we got here from there. So bogged down in money - the getting and losing of it - that we can't see beyond it. Or is that just how it looks to us, here at meltdown central ?
Meanwhile, in Japan, the Haru no Ichiban wind, (translatable as either 'The first of spring' or 'the best of spring' ), has already started to blow. That means it's only one month to go until the cherry blossom season. The future does exist. Really.
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