It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
For some strange reason I found myself thinking about super powers the other day. Not about how cool it would be to have one but mostly about how useless they’d be in the real world. Without a horde of super villains to fight against, what practical good is super strength anyway? For the most part comic book abilities seem better suited to creating mischief than doing anything productive or interesting. The one exception I happened upon was time travel. Not necessarily even to mess with stuff. You don’t need the ability to change the past or profit from a preview of tomorrow’s headlines to make time travel totally awesome. Simply being able to observe the universe unfold over a period longer than a human lifespan makes it a power worth having.
It would be fascinating enough to walk the streets of 22nd century America but what about in the year 3012? Imagine plucking someone from the Middle Ages and dropping them in Times Square. What a mind-blowing experience. The differences between today and the next millennium are likely to be even more dramatic given the accelerating pace of change. I imagine a future of increasing global harmony and prosperity and one where everyday technologies seem magical by today’s standards.
And yet we don’t know for certain what tomorrow holds. It’s possible that future generations will look back and see that the beginning of the 21st century marked the pinnacle of human achievement. It may be that there aren’t even any future generations to ponder such things. We may find that tomorrow is not such a great place to visit, let alone to live.
Everywhere Once 