The Future is Now

This weekend I experienced science fiction transformed into reality. I saw Butterscotch; a toy horse that whinnies, swishes his tail, blinks, and moves in response to the touch of your hand. It reminded me of Ray Bradbury stories where the toys becomes a little too sophisticated for the good of their human owners. Every where I went huge plasma screen TVs were on sale, reminding me of another Ray Bradbury story. In “The Pedestrian” a man is arrested by police for his unusual behavior. He is out walking, enjoying the night air while everyone else sits in their living rooms, illuminated by the ghostly blue flicker from huge TV screens hanging on the walls. Ray Bradbury was particularly prescient with the story he titled “The Murderer”. His portrait of a world of constant background noise from radios, TVs, and wrist radios much like the modern cell phone, was written in 1953! The Murderer is sent to a mental institution because he began gleefully destroying all the noise making machines after realizing, “The telephones such a convenient thing: it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. When it wasn’t the telephone it was the television. The radio, the phonograph….It was music by Mozzek in every restaurant, music and commercials on buses I rode to work. When it wasn’t music, it was interoffice communications, and my horror chamber of a radio wristwatch on which my friends and my wife phoned every five minutes.”

It all makes me wonder what other science fiction scenarios will soon be come reality….