8 minute read
Interview with Sybil
What do I tell them? Interview with Sybil
We also tried to have our editor to gaze 30 years into the future. Well, it would not be what she would tell her kids, but rather the grandkids.
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So, here goes:
Gran, tell us a bit about when the world changed as you have said so many times. When the Covid-19 hit the world. Thabo and I were only like 5 and 7 so it is hard for us to really know what it was before. Admittedly, we are now 35 and 37 with kids of our own and they will start to ask.
Let me tell you a few things then. First of all, it was a world based on physical contact. We never used face masks and we had crowds at a soccer match and political rallies and public transport. No masks? But gran, we are all using face masks outside. We hardly ever see a person without one. Weird, gran.
Yes, now it is weird, but remember, after covid-19, when we all it was the new G4 EA H1N1 swine flu. It was more of a scare we were prepared, so it was back with the face masks.
Gran, tell us about physical contact. It is difficult as it is now
We were just used to rubbing shoulders with each other. cheek-to-cheek with the neighbour table was never a problem.
But you know what the biggest changes were? Physical contact and being close to people are both so ingrained in being a human. We crave the near ness. And as much as we have online video and immersive VR, we still need people next to us.
That little fact is the root cause of a lot of global frustrations. We saw it in Japanese societies prior to Covid. We studied it as a new phenomenon and thought it an off-shoot of humanity. Now it is reality.
What do I tell them? Interview with Sybil
We also tried to have our editor to gaze 30 years into the future. Well, it would not be what she would tell
Gran, tell us a bit about when the world changed as you have said so many times. When the Covid-19 hit the world. Thabo and I were only like 5 and 7 so it is hard for us to really know what it was before. Admittedly, we are now 35 and 37 with kids of our own
Let me tell you a few things then. First of all, it was a world based on physical contact. We never used face masks and we had crowds at a soccer match and political rallies and public transport. No masks? But gran, we are all using face masks outside. We hardly ever see a person without one. Weird, gran.
got used to the onset of virus, we had the follow-on. In 2023 than anything, just like the SARS one back in 2004. This time
with a world population of nearly 10 billion.
We did not think about it. Going to a restaurant and sitting
But you know what the biggest changes were? Physical contact and being close to people are both so ingrained in being a human. We crave the nearness. And as much as we have online video and immersive VR, we still need people next to us.
That little fact is the root cause of a lot of global frustrations. We saw it in Japanese societies prior to Covid. We studied it as a new phenomenon and
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Guessing the Future The case for Sci-Fi
It is a hard task to ‘guess’ what will happen 30 years from now. Typically I am not a big reader of science fiction books, but here we are not into major differences.
One of the few science fiction books I have is ‘Earth’ by David Brin. The afterword is rather instructive. It points out that guessing some 30-50 years into the future is not even predictions. Here we look at extrapolations.
In essence, we have the things we look at right now. Cars may be slightly different (remember it typically takes some 10 years to design a brandnew car). So, we have driver-less cars that are emerging now. 30 years from now? Probably the norm.
The 5G network promises nearly unlimited bandwidth, but let us be honest: 30 years from now it will surely not be enough to drive the ‘cloud’ we are only now starting to conceptualise.
We are already starting to mention 7G and 8G networks. And 10G networks are starting to be ‘guessed at’
What it all means is that we can extrapolate what we have, but it is not realistic to invent something totally new. We will still have normal clothes. It is not going to be ‘Startrek’ jumpsuits for all.
The real ‘fun’ side of it is that we ought not to look just at technology. Although it is fun to imagine a world with gadgets, we could also look at how we may develop as humans.
Will we be different? Will we be better humans? More tolerant? Or will we start more wars?
That question might be the one we cannot answer easily. Has humanity evolved in the last thousand years? That is hard to answer. Surely we do not carry swords and chop off people’s heads, but are we really different?
So, our writers have had a difficult task. Trying to imagine a slightly different world, but still within realistic expectations.
… but also something that changed in 2020 – very dramatic change at that!
