I had a vision of the future last night and it is so different than today. Driving a car in the city-limits will be like riding a horse is today, it won't be allowed in the streets. Car's will be driverless, I guess the better word is autonomous but then, what's the difference? City's will be crowded, but better planned with autonomous cars below ground and bikes and electric mopeds above. Restaurants will be empty rooms with touch screens to select the food you want. You won't have to use your credit card for your face will be recognized on entrance, your account debited.
Walking around in the new land, I saw that the people were seldom with like races, sexes, or ages, and most shared the same looking clothes and hair-styles. There was little difference between them, the guys all shared flattops and the woman all shared bod-cuts. They were in no hurry, but then, seemed to be going somewhere.
All the buildings were what we once called mixed-spaced lofts with storefronts on the lowest level and family dwellings above. A few had restaurants on the highest level. Signs were all interactive. That is to say, if you found yourself on an empty street with one of the large, commercial signs and kept you face turned to not make eye-contact, you could see it was in some kind of energy-save mode; however, at that movement it first recognized your eyes, it immediately began your personal message. The few I found on empty streets gave me personal messages like: "What To Feel A Real Book In Your Hands? Go To Martha's Books on Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, We Still Have Paper." When in a group or on a busy street, the advertisements were like old-fashion 30 second commercials. All friendly and oddly enough, mostly Asian.
I wondered why and so went to Marth'a Book, my personal advertisement that I had seen when alone. "What a great advertisement," I thought to myself, "they got me."
Meantime, in the central processing unit for my city, a number appeared on a paperless report that displayed to an alert agent: Ka-Ching! Bingo! Account Credited.
I had been reduced to a click.
Part Two
Martha's Books was not what I would call a bookstore by today's standards, oh, it had the spongy-eyed, not-conformist people scattered about, but it had no books to touch, only more illuminated screens which today we call Smart. I approached one and as soon as it recognized my eyes, and pleasant Asian woman of about 46 game into view, with a precise Eastern accent and said, "Hello, I see you are new to the grid, how may I help you?"
"Hi, I guest it shows. I'm actually in a dream, I think, still, I plan on blogging about this when I wake. I really would like to know when this happened to the world? I mean, we all saw it coming, it's just, wonder if it happened overnight? And when did Chinese become the top language of instructions and English the second? Not that it matters, but, I really thought English would stay on top?"
"Would you like a written or spoken response? I've done the research. I see you don't have the funds to pay for a Paper response."
"So you could print me a paper response to read, really?"
"Yes, that would be 6850.03 Yuan. The kiosk version is always free. Knowledge is golden."
"Okay, tell it to me then."
"In the year 2019 the US shut-down it's government, which moved all investment to China. The USA only had it's good name to go on and once your President Donald Trump destroyed faith in your dollar, then there was a massive selloff of your treasury notes. China secretly agreed to not selloff all of it's shares to keep you in business. AI (Artificial Intelligence) was the wave of the future and for some reason your government at the time was more concerned with trivial politics than taking advantage of the only resource that matters today: information. According to a recent Harvard Study, it was the same thing that happened to your auto-industry in the seventies when the Japanese took over the market. History has shown over and over that a conservative government only gives us moral laws and wars; neither of which are good for a society. While you were trying to outlaw abortion and hang titles on progressive thinkers, WE TOOK OVER... go back to sleep: it's just a dream.
