I go to sleep and wake up 100 years from now. It is now early in the 22nd Century. I look around and notice a few changes have taken place during my slumbers. There is no tv in my room. I don’t see a radio or a laptop computer. This is kind of strange, but not a big deal. After all, I have been asleep for a long time. I am sure I will be able to find someone to explain all this to me.
I walk into the bathroom to take a shower. I can’t find a light switch so I walk into the dark room and it is suddenly filled with light. I notice all the knobs and handles are gone. They have been replaced with buttons and keypads. I finally find the ones that control the shower and get it turned on. Then I have to find the proper temperature. Finally, it’s perfect. I step in and music starts playing. After the music, the DJ comes on with a story that has just come in from their news outlet. They have found a new planet that may be inhabitable. More on the hour. As I step out of the shower and get hit with warm air to dry me off, I wonder what else I have missed in the last 100 years.
I go into the kitchen and find it has changed as much as the bathroom. I am sitting there trying to figure out what I am supposed to do when the door opens and a robot comes out. She begins asking me what I want for breakfast. I ask for a cup of coffee. She walks over to this box looking thing, pushes a button, and there is my coffee. As I sit there and sip it slowly, first because it is hot, and second because I am not sure where it came from, I decide to see if my new “friend’ can tell me about this world I have woken up in. She sits down next to me and starts talking.
She starts by telling me about the little device that looks like a remote control. With it, I have the power to listen to any radio station in the world. It gives me the option of watching movies on a screen that rolls out of the ceiling, or I can be a part of them through the virtual reality headset that is in the coffee table. If I want to use the internet, all I have to do is push a different button and a holographic image is displayed. I tell the device what I am looking for, and it will bring it up. From there, all I have to do is flip through my choices as easily as I used to flip through the pictures on my cellphone.
She asks me if I am ready to go outside. I ponder this for a moment and then decide I have seen enough for a little while. It will take some time to process and learn all of this new technology. I tell her that I am exhausted. I decide I am going to take a nap. She laughs and tells me not to sleep for another 100 years. I need to learn how to use this technology before I wake up to another hundred years of innovations. She is right.
It’s interesting to consider how seamlessly we could merge into the 22nd Century if we had to. I imagine we’d do it better than people from the early 19th would merge into ours, but who know. I’m also interested how many people have commented on showers in the future. Apparently we all wish showers were better.