Think about the changes in society between 1880 and 1910. Women’s fashion shifted, men’s fashion didn’t do much of anything, and the amazing inventions that would be the seeds for much greater things to come were exciting, but not a part of day to day life for most people. As communication has improved and advancements can be brought to the people much faster, changes are happening at an incredible rate, and the difference between the world in 1980 and the world in 2010 seems much greater in comparison to the changes in any prior 30 year span, a trend that is likely to continue.
Ignoring all paradoxes and actual science, if we were to travel back to the beginning of time and stop every hundred years to look around, the difference between stops would be subtle at first. As technology was introduced to society, there were huge leaps forward that made obvious changes in daily life. Prior to the automobile there were no roads as we know them today. We are already working on driverless cars and more focus is being placed on magnetic and electric propulsion. In another hundred years, the streets as we know them may have evolved again. Imagine on our 100s Time Tour watching the hills and farmhouses that have existed in one form or another since the beginning giving way to streets and skyscrapers from one stop to the next, with the streets and skyscrapers again reimagined at the next stop.
I can’t imagine where we’ll be in 30 years. One thing’s for sure—I’m really glad I have a bunch of friends who are Engineers. At least where tech is concerned, Qualified Engineers know what’s on the horizon, and they can design systems that are scalable so there’s room to add as you grow or as more amazing things are invented. They can’t really tell the future, but when their “educated guesses” get to be right so often, it feels like it.
If the door of the Time Machine opened in 2118, I wonder what the world would look like. I don’t think even our Engineers can predict that. I don’t know though. I’ll have to ask them…