May our vision of the future not come true

I know it might sound a bit daft, but I can’t wait for 2040. And no that’s not a typo. I mean 2040.

I remember as a small boy watching a television show in the ’70s about a colony on the moon. I think it was called Alpha 1999. It was a British series which the SABC bought and dubbed into Afrikaans.

It was my introduction to the future – and I was fascinated.

Then, as a teenager, there was the 1982 movie Blade Runner, set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which replicants, who look like humans, work on off-world colonies.

It was a scary look into a dark and disturbing possible future.

Well, when 1999 finally arrived, there was no nuclear waste storage facility on the moon and no manned base. In fact, the moon was mostly mentioned in conspiracy theories about the moon landing and whether the whole thing was a hoax.

The big news of 1999 was of course Y2K. The possibility of every computer on Earth switching off was too horrific to imagine.

But we all know how that turned out.

And this year, there also aren’t any off-world colonies, replicants or mass space travel yet. For us, the big news of 2019 was whether we could keep the lights on, never mind zipping off into space for a holiday somewhere closer to the sun.

Looking to the future, it seems that rising sea levels due to melting ice caps, extreme weather phenomena and other nature disasters will all be the order of the day in two decades or less.

I am no global warming denialist. Not by a long shot. But I can’t help wondering if this time round things will work out the way we expect.

Looking back, it’s obvious that the future envisaged in the past was nothing more than just a vision – and a vision that, thankfully, ended up a far cry from reality.

But that’s the thing about looking back – we all have 20/20 hindsight.

Now that it’s the year 2020, let’s work together to ensure the disastrous future envisaged doesn’t become reality.

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