The future moves very fast. Maybe a bit too fast?

Sometimes, I imagine what would happen if I travelled back in time by forty years or so. I do this occasionally, and wonder what I could do. Sometimes, I'd imagine I would find my parents and give them a list of every massive company to invest in and when, and how I'd convince them I was serious and not just an escaped lunatic. I then try and imagine quite how I'd explain how my phone works to someone who has only just seen the emergence of holograms, or how a fancy touchscreen works when the most advanced thing they own are flared trousers and a moustache. They'd not get where the curly wire was hidden, what an Internet was and if having something called a "face-book" app meant I was a stalker. Then, they'd rip the thing to pieces wondering where you put in the film for the camera. To say they'd be confused and scared is an understatement; this is a generation that thought Jim Davidson was funny and that colour TV was showing off. How confused would they be? Well, what would you say if someone turned up with , say, an iJumper that changed colour depending on your mood, or thickness depending on prevailing weather conditions? It'd blow your tiny mind, wouldn't it? What about an iPen that doubled up as nail clippers, or allowed you to turn the volume down on the TV? Think that's a silly use for a pen? Well, I bet Mr 1972 thought that a thesaurus, piano and a torch would be pointless on a telephone, but mine has all three, and more!

Then, if somehow I brought them forward to today, I reckon it'd be about half an hour before they were reduced to a quivering wreck. I mean, we'd imagine that if someone from the times of Henry VIII knocked on your door, they'd probably conclude that they'd gone officially insane the moment they saw your refrigerator, or your radiator, or your Dyson, and proceed to walk down to the Doctor's (somehow) and be confused even further when the Doctor didn't prescribe a course of blood-letting, but someone from only 40 years ago? Surely they would be ok with things like cars and shirts and surgery and golf, no? Ok, things like music might confuse and disorientate them. They might wonder how a Dubstep makes music without a guitar, or what on earth possessed people to devise a form of music called Rap, but Mr 1972 grew up with the Beatles, and grew up with his parents decrying how it completely wasn't real music, and tried to educate him in the scary ways of Cliff Richard. He is aware that times will change occasionally. Indeed, he would look at hooded jumpers without the influence of the Daily Mail's conclusion that they are a gang symbol and are a greater threat to the world than nuclear bombs or the EU, and notice that they seem rather practical. Nope, where he will fall of his perch and froth at the knees is when he looks into your front room, and discovers a metal book with an on switch, that seems capable of telling you the latest football result.

I mean, can you imagine what someone from then would say if the saw even a laptop, let alone the Internet? It's the sort of thing that is so futuristic that I'm surprised that more movies weren't made about it. The closest I can think of is to compare my eye-fone with Ziggy from Quantum Leap. No, having Broadband is possibly the most important invention I can think of, not only because it's spawned words like "lol" and "defriended", but because pretty much our whole world is based around it. I mean, is there anything that isn't? What you're reading now, for example, wouldn't happen without any internet, you couldn't book your holiday without being pressured into buying insurance by a lady in a blue blazer, and you wouldn't be able to tell the world that you've just eaten a bagel. 1972 man had to actually get dressed and walk to the shops to read the papers, I can do it in between waking up and getting up. Where would our students be without Wikipedia? Doing their own research, that's where! But the best thing is, that despite all the years that humans have lived in places they built, and have eaten food that didn't need a spear throwing at it first, we've only had the internets for, what, fifteen years? Even then, it spent the first eight being a refuge for the terminally introverted and mal-sighted. That's seven years it's taken it to change the whole world! I couldn't even build a shed in seven years! It's taken barely more than a decade to make the progress that took something like fifty years before then! At this rate, we'll all have hovercars and servant-bots by this time next Tuesday, and personally, I don't think this is a good thing.

I say this because the other day, I was round a friend's house. Now, he has a TV, as you do, that is the old school style thick model, the one where the back is as thick as it is wide. This is fine by me, as it still does the same thing my skinny TV does. However, he had an Xbox 360 plugged in, a machine that assumes everyone who owns one has a HD telly and replaces their car every time they fill up the ash tray, and the writing on the screen was so small, even bacteria would have been reaching for their reading glasses. I literally couldn't read it at all! It's the same story with my old phone; it could connect to the internet, but it wasn't worth it as the words would be so small, that sensitive viewing equipment would be needed to establish if anything was even on the screen, let alone the language.

As much as all the futuristic tech we have now is amazing, slow it down, guys! It's a bit much to make words unfit for an old TV already, and it's not even that old, he's only had it, what, six or seven years? his car is older than that, and it doesn't need new software or HD tyres, or a USB petrol cap. Before we know it, it won't be just Mr 1970's that can't comprehend all the tech around today, but it will be anyone who doesn't replace their appliances every time there's a day in the week.

(images credited to suphakit73 and Matt Banks)

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