"The future is usually like the past  right up to the moment when it
isn't." George F. Will, Newsweek, 10.27.03


"Den som inte ser bakåt när han går framåt måste se upp."    
Tage Danielsson


I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than
the past.  I think the past was not predictable when it started.
-- Donald Rumsfeld


A student of the rise and fall of cultures cannot fail to be
impressed by the role played in this historical succession by the
image of the future. The rise and fall of images precedes or
accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's
image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full
bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however,
the culture does not long survive." (The Image of the Future, Fred
Polak, 1961)



   YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
   Your horizon rises--I see it parting away for more august dramas;
   I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation, but other
         nations preparing;
   I see tremendous entrances and exits--I see new combinations--I see
         the solidarity of races;
   I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's
         stage;
   (Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts
         suitable to them closed?)
   I see Freedom, completely arm'd, and victorious, and very haughty,
         with Law on one side, and Peace on the other,
   A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
   --What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
   I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;          10
   I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
   I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
   I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give
         way;)
   --Never were such sharp questions ask'd as this day;
   Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;
   Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
   His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere--he colonizes the
         Pacific, the archipelagoes;
   With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the
         wholesale engines of war,
   With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all
         geography, all lands;
   --What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing
         under the seas?                                              20
   Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the
         globe?
   Is humanity forming, en-masse?--for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow
         dim;
   The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine
         war;
   No one knows what will happen next--such portents fill the days and
         nights;
   Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to
         pierce it, is full of phantoms;
   Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;
   This incredible rush and heat--this strange extatic fever of dreams,
         O years!
   Your dreams, O year, how they penetrate through me! (I know not
         whether I sleep or wake!)
   The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind
         me,
   The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon
         me.     
-- Walt Whitman



He tries to draw the line between what is done today and what will be done 
tomorrow. Tomorrow we will have crossed that line,
and he will draw it again at the next boundary. But the future beckons, still.
Hal Finney, on the resistance against genetic engineering


You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago
     "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music
     and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy,
     childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't
     have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'. 
            -- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

"...no matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new technologies coming in,
       new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory." 
              - Freeman Dyson

The future is roaring into our lives like an express freight on a steep
downhill, the throttle stuck in wide open.  Some of us are on the train,
some clustered around the tracks, some standing on the tracks, (some tied
to the tracks?), and some only hear the whistle screaming in the distance.
Hold onto your (fill in appropriate item of clothing or body part) folks,
it's gonna be a wild ride!
Jeff Davis


"He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator." -
Francis Bacon, Essays


Chris Peterson and Gayle Pergamit: "If a thirty year projection
'sounds like science fiction,' it may be wrong. But if it doesn't sound like
science fiction, then it's definitely wrong."

"the future arrives sooner than we expect, and in a different order."


                       What makes human beings unique is that
                       for the first time in the 3.5 billion years of
                       life on this planet, this single species has a
                       choice in its future.