Interview with Future Me

"If your future self could be talking to you now, what would s/he have to tell you about the future?"

Future Me has a clear advantage over Present Me.  He has already seen things I haven't yet seen plus he knows everything I already know, too.  He also has the benefit of hindsight and he can see the mistakes I am yet to make, the opportunities I will either ignore or fail to exploit to their full potential.  He's in a pretty good position to dole out any amount of useful advice - if only he's prepared to share it.

I'm guessing you're feeling pretty smug, Future Me, looking at your fledgling self - are you full of pity for me or am I an OK guy?  Are you angry at me for moving in the wrong direction for what must be obvious to you from your time-warped position of knowledge?

Is Future Me telling Current Me that I should have embraced this technology and bypassed that one?  Hardly !  They're all just stepping stones to something better.  Future Me will not be hung up on a specific technology.  He will laugh at me for worrying whether I can operate devices that run iOS, Windows, Android.  Who cares what the programming environment is?  Future Me assures me that these devices all talk happily to each other through control processes that render the underlying operating system irrelevant to the user.

I'm pleased to see that Future Me confirms that the power of language is even more important where we're headed.  Not the formal, academic English of yesteryear but the ability to be understood, without ambiguity in just a few words.  There's no time to compose long tomes - immediacy is key but the skill that will make my voice heard above the billions of other communicators is the use of succinct, inciteful, honest, no nonsense words, laced with humour and compassion.

I'll be communicating with so many more people every day than I currently do and I'll have a lot less 'alone time'.  Escaping to a quiet place will be far more challenging.  Why would I want to hide out anyway?

What does the future hold?

Future Me has great news for me about the technology interface.  In fact Future Me won't need baffling words like "interface" because using technology will require little or no help for me to harness it.  I will be surrounded by complex technology but interacting with it will be far less complicated than it currently is.  I won't need a training course or a user guide to show me how to operate it.  It will be intuitive - it will understand my voice and will respond to my touch.  I won't need to think how the technology worked - I'll just expect that it will behave predictably.  It won't frustrate me but instead will guide me forward.  I will welcome the opportunity to use it rather than worry that it might fail me.

Future Me will be amused that I'm hung up on trying to predict which gadget will succeed and which will die because they failed to adapt to the changing world.  He tells me that I should, even in 2013, be well aware that all devices have a limited shelf life and are constantly evolving into something faster, smarter, cheaper.  I should already know that display devices, communication tools, are throwaway consumables and that aspect will not change.  If I think today's devices are smart I have some wonderful surprises ahead and I will be stunned by my own naivety.

The greatest message of hope that Future Me will have for Current Me is that quality of life through better health is just around the corner - there is unbelievable advance in prevention and cure coming in every aspect of medicine.  Today's blunt, invasive and dangerous surgery looks positively barbaric alongside the micro- and nano-surgery techniques that are already taking their early steps around me now.  Those diseases that have killed or crippled people we know are mostly treatable or preventable in the not too distant future.  If only they had been available in my current time, how different life would be for our family.  Future Me can see what is possible whereas I can only hope that the cure for those life threatening ailments is nearly here.

I think that my meeting with Future Me has left me exhausted but happy.  There's a bright world ahead and Future Me is not going to spoil the surprise by giving me all the details.  But hang in there, accept that nothing stands still, hone those social skills and embrace every opportunity to interact with your fellow man.