British mid 19th Century futurist, author, and all together nerdatronic clever guy Arthur C. Clarke’s wrote ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ The reason I know and can spout this information at will is not because I have read a book and now become Mr. Intellectual. Nor that I have been on a course entitled ‘How to pretend to be an intellectual for a day’ and this be that day, no! It’s just from a film. That film what I watched and reviewed for this week, The Box. If you’ve read the review, then you’ll know I didn’t think it was a very good or interesting film really (if you haven’t read the review then don’t let this mini-ew put you off). However that quote, I did find interesting. As is the great thing about most interesting things, it got me to thinking. Thinking about things I don’t understand.

To take the most obvious example I can think of, of a piece of information of which humanity is now certain. ‘The earth is round (there or thereabouts)’. Before anyone was certain of the globe’s  spherical structure it was only a theory. Before it was a recognised and respected theory, it was a discredited, laughable theory. Before that it was only a dream at most., and before that it was simply unthinkable. As more pieces of now certain information are thought of, a pattern within all of time’s inventions quickly emerges. To use a recent example... I can make mention of wireless technology.

Travel just a small distance back in time, and the thought of being able to operate electronic devices, wirelessly, would only have been a surreal dream. Travel further (before electricity), and the capacity to even dream about it would be gone. Imagine the reaction of a scientific world, something that thinks and pretends to work around solid non-variables like facts and proof, to the theory of wireless technology. To be able to send data, messages, video, electronically, through the air. Nowadays it’s almost inconceivable to imagine a world where that’s not a possibility because of what we know the space in between two things is made of (waves). But when the air was seen as simply air, an item of nothingness, the concept of anything we’re simply ‘not able to see’ being inside, would be like magic.

Were you alive in the 60s? I wasn’t. Because of that, I don’t think I can ever be sure (unless I asked someone over 50, but who’s got time for that? Maybe you Grandpa, but I’ve got things to do over here!). Today’s reality is made of yesterday’s theories, which themselves are the day before’s dreams.

We have devices enabling us to hear sounds happening in real time, thousands of miles away (telephones).

We can exchange data, images, funds by simply being ‘near’ something, as long as it’s looking for it (Oyster Cards, Keyless Keys)

We can move an object along any axis, and without the use of any camera, a computer programme can tell its precise path, as well as predicting future behaviours (GPS, iPhone)

I’ve seen futuristic films/TV shows, Back to the Future, Total Recall, Star Trek, Red Dwarf. Sure they had teleportation and time travel, which we’re missing out on, but we’ve got space cruises and flying cars (possible if never practical). Besides, where was their mobile technology? Didn’t see Captain James T. Kirk penning his Captain’s log on a wireless keyboard as he sat on the toilet did you? No. He had to do it as a speech in front of the whole crew. What if he wanted to bad mouth one of them for fucking up? Bad feelings all round. Not what you want as Captain.

The world of science, likes to think it operates in worlds of certainty, it’s hindered by its own lack of impossibility. In order for science to be proven, there needs to be proof yes. But in order to find things to prove, science must originally work in a world of imagination, of design, and possibility. This is what’s so exciting about the combination of the two worlds. The bespectacled world of white coats, clipboards, and graphs. And the world of the dope smoking dreamer. Each are intrinsically important to the human race. Not necessarily to our survival, in fact most probably the very opposite.

Where would we be without technological advances of any kind? We’d be living each day as if it were our last. Only travelling as far as we could walk, eating and drinking only what we could find, and that which would not instantly kill us. Boring? Or just ‘simple’?

But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world full of advertising, of competition and thus jealousy, and we always have done. A world where a mirage of happiness is just around the corner. A mirage, revealed to be a sign to further happiness, pointing behind the next corner.

Can you imagine what the next 20 years’ technological advances will be? Of course you can, but first they must be laughed at and thrown out, before becoming reality. Teleportation, time travel, telekinesis, instant biological regeneration. Anything you can dream, it’s all possible.

Arthur C. Clarke’s 3 Laws:

1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3.Any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The Future’s Bright - Brought to you by James Wormald -