Is the future here yet?

As a kid, I watched Star Trek. Some things have come true. I remember at the market you had to push to open the door. On Star Trek, the doors opened automatically with a SWOOSH when Captain Kirk made his dramatic entrance (wow, he’s still with us as I write this). A few years later when you stepped onto the rubbery footstep/pad thingy the market doors opened. A few years after that, sensors above the doors sensed your approach and opened the doors with a SWOOSH.

I remember Mr. Spock asking the computer. “Computer, ….” And the computer answered his question. Well, what can you say today?  Alexa, Google, AI Chat etc….

There are many other science fiction books and movies with elements that have predicted things we have now (smart phones and watches); so soon will we be like the cyborgs on Star Trek the Next Generation; half human and half machine?

If we don’t destroy the Earth, and humans are around in two or three hundreds years, I’m sure we will have deep-space travel, perhaps figure out how to warp the time/space continuum (warp speed, Mr. Sulu) so we can skip across the galaxy.

Although, we now have Elon Musk (with his power and money) perpetuating deep-fake videos of political candidates saying or doing things they did not say or do. These videos are then shared hundreds of thousands of times whereby so many people see them without checking their authenticity. So, I guess we will all be in his cyborg army soon…

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL!”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I cannot do that.”