Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #50

 There will be a World Cup where Canada advances farther than Germany.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #49

There will be a World Cup where Italy does not qualify, but Curacao and Cabo Verde do. (Not to rub it in, but this echoes back to an entry from a few years ago.)

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #48

 Maestro Fresh Wes is on a stamp.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #47

In a bank, you will no longer confirm a transaction by signing a paper on the dotted line. Instead, you’ll sign on a touch-sensitive computer screen, using an electronic virtual pen. The screen detects the pen’s movement, instantly displaying the signature in high resolution, indistinguishable from ink. The image of your signature will then be recorded on the bank’s computer system, where it can be retrieved and compared with your signature at any of their branches, from anywhere on earth. The pen will still have a chain attached.

The Secret Life Of The Centre Square

 It's kind of depressing how fandom can come and go. I mean, there logically will be a last person alive who still misses Automan, what if it's me? That's why I find it reassuring whenever I see evidence of an old fandom. So if I come across Greatest American Hero fan fiction, I rejoice (but don't read it) because I'm glad to see passion for an older media franchise. And genuine passion too, not just someone name-dropping it to sound eclectic like I just did.

So recently, when I saw a personalized license plate that read "Zsa Zsa G," I found it reassuring. I was never a fan of the actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, but I'm glad that there's still someone around who misses her. So much so that I'm not going to do the math on the likelihood that it really is a Zsa Zsa Gabor fan, vs just someone named Zsa Zsa G. I don't think there's a big Hungarian community in town, so I'll just go with my initial assumption.

By the way, it's as good a time as any to revisit those 70s-80s pseudo-celebrities. It might seem weird to current generations, but there was a certain type of D-list celebrity that hung around on game shows or did guest spots on sitcoms, or appeared on a talk show in need of a human punchline. Today, we often talk about someone who's "famous for being famous," but that just means they are famous for reality TV or social media. But back then, these people just kept showing up on our TV and we weren't always sure why. 

Of course, those were real people, and in the modern day, we've learned more about them. It’s sort of like  when Dolly Parton was only known for her bustline, and Betty White was just another frequent TV star. It'd be quite a tragedy if society had never seen beyond that. Well, I’ve since learned that Charo was actually quite a good guitarist. Fannie Flagg wrote Fried Green Tomatoes. JM J Bullock lived with HIV for much of his career and co-hosted a talk show with Tammy Faye Bakker. Which reminds me:

Things Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #46:

An actress will win the Best Actor Oscar playing Tammy Faye Bakker.

Anyway, it’s unfortunate timing for that generation of borderline celebrities. Today’s media landscape is just built for such people: Then, they had to make do with guest appearances, but today they’d have reality shows, Hallmark movies, and so many social media followers.

Things The Teenage Me Would Have Found All Too Believable About Life In The Future

There’s a service where a small business can get a name and logo made for them by Artificial Intelligence. Such uses of A.I. in creative industries is quite controversial. And yet, a TV commercial for this service sidesteps the controversy, and instead shows a young proprietor of a small business explaining the concept to her older business partner. The partner exclaims, “A-I-Like-It!”

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #45

 You’ll read this headline and understand it:

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #44

The theme music for Monday Night Football is a cover of “In The Air Tonight” performed by a country star and a rapper.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #43

Eventually, the NFL will just drop the pretence, and make the Pro Bowl into a flag-football game.

The Future Is Bunk

Ford has a new ad featuring Bryan Cranston in a variety of guises talking about innovation. The premise being that some unknown "other guys" are talking about doing futuristic things while Ford is and always has been actually building it.

The most dramatic part is the android Cranston, which is quite well done. It's like the ad grabs you and holds you out over the Uncanny Valley, and teases, "gonna drop you, gonna drop you!" Of course the fake TED talk is good too. But the president in the plane just looks so old-fashioned now. I mean, a president swamped with work? Weird. But I appreciated the concept the best, since I've always hated it when companies make vague claims about future technology. "Use Smith Brand soap. One day soon we'll bring you cyber soap."

The ultimate in future promises was a series of ads AT&T did in the early nineties. They made a lot of promises about future products like video phones and smart homes. That really ticked me off, because they were trying to sell us on things that they clearly were nowhere near delivering. Why not just promise us warp drive while you're at it?

At the risk of getting even further off track, someone uploaded the entire series to YouTube, and it's fascinating to see the view of today from a quarter-century ago. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much they got right. Well, they "got it right" in the sense that it would happen. In most of the cases, it wasn't AT&T that brought it to us. I wonder if there's grounds for a class-action suit here?

But back to Ford. Much as I like the idea of the ad, it all comes off pretty flat. For one thing, is "Paint it Black" really the best song to accompany the monologue? Let's talk about building the future with a song about depression. Okay, now that I think about it, I guess it was a reference to the Model T coming in black only, which was for the sake of standardization and efficiency, which was one of the innovations they're talking about. Just think, they've been sitting on that one since the song came out in the sixties.

The biggest problem, however, is that it's so out-of-step with reality. Ford is a company that just decided to dedicate itself primarily to Trucks and SUV's. Sure, those are popular, but in the public's imagination, they represent the Walmart parking lot more than the future. And they don't have a Prius or a Bolt in their line-up to point to as something they're pushing the limits with right now. So the climax of the ad is Cranston dissing other companies for not being futuristic enough while driving a bulky pickup that looks like it could have come from any time in the last couple of decades.

What's especially perplexing is that the ad and the campaign it's a part of is apparently supposed to be putting down tech companies. I had assumed that the vague "other guys" mentioned in the commercial were other car companies. But no, they're thinking of the tech companies that have been encroaching on the car biz. What? I know, I've been critical of such companies, but let's face it, it's quite an indictment of the American car business that Tesla has gotten as far as it has. Meanwhile, when I just went Googling for the latest on Ford electric vehicles, I just got promises that they have electric trucks coming soon. So this is the biggest self-own in advertising since Diet Coke's "Just For the Taste of it."

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #42

There will come a day when you no longer hear the traditional phone ring, as all phones — whether cell or cordless — are fully electronic. At first, they just use artificial beeps; then later they can use a recording of whatever sound the user wants to notify them of an incoming call.

And then there will come another day, about twenty years later, when you’ll hear that traditional phone ring all the time in all sorts of places, because lots of people thought it would be ironic to use a recording of the phone ring as their ringtone on their cell phones.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #40 & 41

#40:

Superhero movies are more popular than ever. That's right, Batman made people forget about Superman IV, and it's been all success from there. Except Batman and Robin, you'll want to skip that one.

Anyway, the point is that now it's not just the biggest names that are getting their own movie franchises, even the more niche characters get big budgets.

#41:

You know Bob Ross, the super laid-back artist with a show on PBS? Sadly, he dies in 1995. But he is still well remembered, and is as much a pop-cultural icon as ever.

Anyway, put those two facts together, and, by 2018, this happens and it doesn't even seem weird:

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #39

You'll see Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness perform "I'm an Adult Now" on TV at age 58.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #38

There will be a World Cup where Iceland qualifies but not Italy.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #37

They give out free virtual reality goggles in cases of beer.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #36

In 2016, Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg will co-host a cooking show. And that won't even be one of the top 100 craziest things to happen that year.

Deriving Functions

Apple has an interesting new innovation. You may have missed it because we were all distracted by the collapse of western civilization. But their new MacBook Pro has replaced the function keys with a "Touch Bar" which is a small touch-sensitive screen. The idea is that a program can present customized buttons, or entirely different controls. The initial demonstration showed a video-editing program that let you scroll up different parts of the of the timeline with the Touch Bar.

The reaction seemed to be pretty negative. Though I thought it was a good idea. Let's face it: function keys kind of suck. They were okay in the pre-GUI days when they're really was no better way to reach large numbers of features. But now that we have drop-down menus, toolbars, context menus, tool-tips, etc., there really is no need for a row of unlabeled buttons.

To make matters worse, computer makers have usurped the function keys to handle things like volume control. Now I can't remember whether my F5 is going to save or turn down the screen brightness. I actually find myself missing the WordPerfect function key template.

But a touch screen would be ideal here. Their disadvantage is that the lack of physical keys mean that using them at speed is difficult (as anyone counting typos on this blog will know.) Inevitably, a company led by a hunt-and-peck typist will try marketing an all-touchscreen keyboard, and then wonder why it flops.

But no one needs to touch-type on the function keys, so it doesn't really matter if you have to look down at them. And if you're going to look down before you press the button, you might as we get the confirmation that it does what you think it does.

What they need to do now is start replacing all of the less-used keys. A lot of them are just a technological appendix. Which leads to...

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #35

Computer keyboards still have a SysReq key. And no one has figured out what it's for.

But to me the biggest proof that the Touch Bar is here to stay is that people immediately started doing weird things with it. You can play the original Doom on it, or have a KITT style radar blip. I'm sure they can come up with plenty more ideas. Maybe make it look like a WordPerfect template.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #34

The Cubs will eventually win the World Series.

I don't have a joke about this.  But it does fit the category better than just about anything.

Burger Time With A Computer

When I was young I - like many children - didn't like mixing foods. One way that manifested itself was that I preferred my hamburgers plain, no mustard, ketchup, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Well actually, I was okay with cheese.

Even though that's usual for kids, it caused some problems. For instance, my parents liked to put onions in the hamburger patties. I'm not sure why, I guess they saw it in a magazine it something. But I hated it. A hamburger is the simplest food there is, so adding in something I didn't really like just made it unappetizing. Of course - as with so many things parents do - I later realized it was actually not too bad an idea.

The other casualty of my dislike for mixed foods was McDonalds. Most kids love McDonalds as much as pop-culture programs them to. But their assembly-line burgers with their blur of condiments were just gross to me. Sure, over time I got used to food with a variety of flavours. Now I have relatively few foods that I hate, and no alergies or religious restrictions, so I don't really think about the ingredients of anything I order. If I order a fast food burger, it doesn't even occur to me to hold any toppings.

Anyway, it's taken a while, but here's how far I've come: Today I used McDonalds' custom burger kiosk. And there were several levels of irony.

• McDonalds, that paragon of standardization, is betting their future on personalization
• I get to choose my topings at McDonalds, 40 years after I could have used the opportunity
• Given the choice, I put lots of weird stuff on it
• I voluntarily added onions.

It was kind of fun, bashing pictures of food on the touchscreen, trying hard to look like I know what I'm doing. But more than anything, it was one of rare points when I honestly felt like I'm living in the future. Yeah, I'm using a computer to order at McDonalds; I'm George Jetson. That's why it seems futuristic. So many of the really mind-blowing changes in our society are totally new concepts, rather than a modern spin on old things. Like you never saw Facebook in science fiction. It never occured to anyone because it's not like anything that was around then. But ordering fast food is something that's been done for decades; doing it in a gratuitously-modern way is just how I envisioned the future.

The process was fairly easy. Though in retrospect, I would have expected an easier interface from McDonalds. It also wasn't as superfast efficient as you would expect from a collaboration between technology and the Western service economy. For instance, the machine had to tell me to get a locator beacon from the counter. (Okay, I'm not sure if that's what their called; I mean the thing that identifies who you are and where your table is.) I have to ask at the counter? That cancels the system's two biggest benefits: efficiency and not talking to people.

When the burger was delivered, it came on a rustic cutting board, with the fries in a precious little deep-fryer basket. It was like what you'd expect in a chain restaurant where you have to chose between sitting at the bar or grill. But on closer inspection, the cutting board was plastic. Oh, McDonalds, even in the future, you can't help but be McDonaldsy.

This is an interesting concept, and it could change how fast food works. I've always been interested in how McDonalds organizes itself for efficiency. At the tiny McDonalds counter we used to have in downtown Kitchener, you had a great opportunity to see how everything works, because most of the food preparation happened within ten feet of the counter. So you see them making the burger patties dozens at a time, watch the worker with the condiment gun firing at each open faced bun. And you see how they try to make the maximum number of offerings from the fewest possible basic ingredients.

But now, all they have to do is have the basic ingredients available, and leave it to the customers to figure out what things they want to create out of them. So maybe one day they won't bother trying to make up standard sandwiches. Instead of researching what people want and marketing it, they'll just concentrate on getting those basic building blocks to the restaurants as cheaply as possible.

(Only after typing "building blocks" did I realize they have created Lego-as-food.)

But I'm not sure that it's going to work out they way they intended. See, I never saw anyone else getting their custom burger. Sure, I was there well after the lunch rush (I wanted as few people as possible to watch me blunder through the process.) But there were still a lot of people going through, and many were using the self-serve kiosk, but it was mostly to order from the standard menu. So maybe this personalized, lots-of-choice isn't what people want from McDonalds.

They've been trying to cater to a sophisticated clientelle for a while. They're pushing coffee, they made nicer interiors, and suddenly all their restaurants look like they were designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright fanboy. (Speaking of which, if I have any readers in Pennsylvania, could you check on Fallingwater and ensure that it hasn't been turned into a Mcdonalds.) But I don't know if any of this has really changed the way people think about Mcdonalds. It's true that as I left after my meal, I noticed there was a Ferrari in the parking lot, which has to be a first. But mostly it was just people coming in and casually ordering standardized food, same as it ever was.

So perhaps they should embrace the way we see them. For instance, instead of the cheesy cutting board, here's my idea: develop a machine that prints out the burger containers and assembles them on the premises; you can upload your own designs, so your burger comes in a traditional container, but a custom one. That way, you're getting the fast food experience, but it's a modern take on it.

Pride And Prejudice

Toronto's annual Pride parade was this weekend, and it made news for a few reasons.  One was that it was the first one attended by a sitting Prime Minister.  Which brings up:

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #33

The Prime Minister went to a pride parade, wearing a pink shirt, and someone took this photo of him, and it didn't end his career.

                                 

Truth is, it will probably help his career; in addition to standing up for tolerance, you know that some political opponent is going to try to score points with the homophobes by bringing this up in the future, with disastrous results for themselves.

But the other big story was that Toronto's chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) held up the parade with a protest.  They had a variety of demands, many of which were uncontroversial measures to help LGBT people of colour, but the most talked-about is that the police be excluded from future Pride parades. Oh, speaking of which:

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #33.5

It's just assumed that police forces have floats in Pride parades.

                                 

Anyway, this protest took many of us by surprise.  For one thing, many people were displeased with the idea of excluding someone from an event that's built around inclusion. But the other is that it seems as though two oppressed minorities are fighting each other.

Though it's sad to see that, I can understand the dynamics behind it.  We may think of Gay Rights as the new kid on the activist block, but it's actually been wildly successful, and in many ways it's passed other causes in mainstream acceptance.  Look at it this way: which is going to cause a scared white suburbanite cross to the other side of the street faster: a black man, or a gay man.  I'm kidding of course: the suburbanite wouldn't be walking down the street.  But my point is, it's not too surprising that those fighting racism might see the Pride parade as part of an establishment they aren't part of, rather than a fellow campaigner for rights.

I may understand how the thinking happens here, but I really disagree with it: Normally I've supported Black Lives Matter.  I do think police have made mistakes.  But there seems to be a big philosophical difference between criticizing police and demonizing them.  Or to put it another way, disliking some of their actions does not mean disliking them. It's particularly unfortunate because the police participation in Pride is an example of them trying to reach out and be part of the community, (with a community they once antagonized) which is the sort of attitude that should be encouraged.

That's why this seems like a watershed moment.  There are a lot of progressive-minded people like myself who were on board with BLM are now looking for the exits.  It's unfortunate because they still have a lot to accomplish, so I hope the grassroots ask whether this is really the direction they want to go.