Miles's blog

Two of my former colleagues in the D.A.’s office are pregnant, which is wonderful news and got me to thinking.  Their children will be born in 2012, and should they live to 88, which does not seem unreasonable, they will see the calendar change to a new century.  For someone born in the 1950s, the idea that I will get to meet people who will be alive in 2100 blows me away.

We just had the change to a new millennium a few years ago.  It is only recently I got used to writing 20XX on my checks.  But here are two children who might very well live out the entirety of the remainder of the 21^st century.  To them, the time of my birth will seem as distant as the Civil War does to me.  They will never know a time without everyone carrying a portable computer around which allows instantaneous communication.  Network television to them will be a meaningless concept, or at best simply a quaint choice of how to receive entertainment.  The internet will be part of their lives virtually from the time they are born, and there will never be such a thing as a “long distance” phone call.

I was born into a world dominated by a cold war between communism and capitalism.  They are being born into a time where religious, rather than political, ideology creates most of the world’s conflict.  My parents lived through the Great Depression and World War II which colored their thinking; their parents grew up with limited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the recession we are still in.  Not insignificant events, but certainly not on the same scale. 

I was raised listening to vinyl records chosen after listening to AM radio.  I don’t know if these children will ever listen to a radio, but if so, they will download music they want immediately and have a listening device to play any song they want at any time they want.  I do certainly hope that they will be exposed to what to them will be ancient music like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and that hip-hop will fade away.  

When I was a kid we sat in the front seat of the car, not belted in while Mom drove us around all day since she didn’t work.  This was not exactly the safest method of travel as one day I was playing with the door handle, and when Mom turned a corner I rolled out of the car into the street.  I am sure I hit my head which explains a lot of what has happened since.  Even when Meg was little we stuck her in her car seat in the front, facing forward, and if she was good she could change the radio station.  These kids will be sitting in the back seat, facing backwards and probably watching a “Baby Einstein” video on their iPads.  

Strangely, cars are basically the same.  I remember my dad telling me cars were basically the same in the 60s as what he drove in the 30s.  They still are. While they have a lot more features, the simple act of putting your foot on the gas and using a steering wheel on surface streets has pretty much never changed.  I expect in the next 88 years transportation will change dramatically.  Google is already experimenting with cars that drive themselves.  The idea is too brilliant to fail.  Once we remove drivers from cars we are all freed not only to text while traveling, but the whole idea of driving is eliminated.  Kid need to go to soccer practice?  Mom can just send the car to pick him up.  Safety will be no concern as robots don’t get road rage, feel the need for speed, or get distracted.  I know, do you really want to trust you life to a computer seeing as how half the time yours crashes while trying to download the newest Adele song?  But really, who do you trust to be safer—a computer, or that asshole in the next lane who is driving a jacked-up pick-up with those mudflaps that have the silhouette of a naked woman, a sticker in the back windshield of some kid peeing, and a bumper sticker talking about taking his gun out of his cold, dead fingers?  

These kids will probably never have a “home” phone.  Meg doesn’t.  They will never get the measles, mumps, whooping cough, and a bunch of other stuff that I had to suffer through.  Should they need surgery someday, most of it will be done through a tiny device inserted in a pinhole allowing them to leave the hospital in a couple of days (which, of course, their insurance will require them to do).  The idea of a heart transplant, instead of being a miracle as it is to me, to them will be just another medical complication somebody has to deal with.  I would expect by the end of the century medical science will find ways to create organs, so those who need kidneys, livers, even hearts will always be able to get one.

Of course, I don’t think the next 88 years will be a picnic.  There are already seven billion people in the world.  How many can the Earth really hold?  Of course no one knows and these sorts of Malthusian concerns have been allayed throughout time, but there has to be a limit somewhere, right?  How about global warming.  Assuming the Earth is getting warmer what will that mean?  Will the Statute of Liberty become merely an underwater attraction?  Will these children take their winter vacations in tropical Baltimore and summer in Canada’s Northwest Territories?  I do expect by 2100 we will figure out ways to generate electricity without having to burn things like coal, oil, and natural gas.  Most buildings will be covered with solar panels, and electronic devices will be charged quickly and fully (and for much longer batteries) through exposure to a few minutes of sunlight.  

I would predict a doom and gloom scenario where people find a way to either exterminate themselves or cause the Earth to do it for them, but people have been predicting that for so long I guess I believe the human race has another 88 years in it.  I have no doubt some virus will cause an epidemic for a while; that some wacko will find a way to detonate a nuclear weapon; and that even in 2100 the world will not live in peace any more than it does now.  

In fact, the world is a pretty peaceful place right now.  The 20^th Century was pretty violent, with almost every person on earth touched by war.  My generation was significantly less affected, although Vietnam raged.  Meg’s life is affected by our Mid-East wars only as a citizen of America, without any personal connection.  I don’t know if the world can go 88 more years without a significant war.  I tend to think al-Qaeda and others will make terrorism into, in essence, the third world war.  But hopefully, by 2100 extremism will fade through the avenue of world-wide communication, and those who seek to impose their will on others through the use of force will give up such a quest or at a minimum be neutralized.  I don’t know if I will live to see that, but maybe these children will.

I also hope that somehow in the next 88 years Hollywood figures out how to make good movies again.