Off Message

Growing up, I didn’t think about the future that much. I mean, I thought about the future in a science fiction sense, immersed, as I was, in a world of Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 and Space 1999. But I didn’t give much thought to what the actual future would be like. I didn’t expect to be zooming around with a jetpack strapped to my back in 2007 or anything. I was much more concerned with the here and now. Or rather the there and then. Actually, make that the imaginative next and tomorrow in the physical there and then. If you see what I mean.

Not having pined for a dazzling jetpack-wearing SF future as some seem to have done, I find it’s the little things that fill me with future-now awe: the first time I had regular access to the internet; the revelation of having instant access to thousands of records with my first (and, indeed, only) iPod; and now – and probably most exciting of all – the discovery of digital telly on demand. Fannying about with the remote control at the weekend, the wench and I suddenly realised we could watch, whenever we liked, the vast bulk of the previous week’s telly. Not only that, we could actually pause, rewind and fast forward those programmes! No setting of videos; no crappy tape quality when you do manage to set the video; no not actually being able to work out how to tape off digital channels in the first place due to a mixture of technological dumbfuckery and sheer laziness. It was all there, waiting for us, almost literally at the touch of a button (a few buttons, in fact). This really was one of those road to Damascus, heavens opening, choir of angels moments. Truly, we are now living in the future. And it’s fucking brilliant.