I was looking at the moon tonight, high in the sky over the ocean, and it occurred to me that what I was seeing was exactly what a Roman citizen saw at the time of Christ. Now, if I were able to communicate with that Roman, as we both looked up at the moon, and I told him that in my time man traveled to the moon, landed on it, walked around a bit, and then returned to earth, he would not have believed me. “No way,” he would say (or “nulla via”). In fact, I find it hard to believe, too. Jill had serious doubts and suspected that the whole “one giant step for mankind” scene took place on a huge sound stage in Hollywood.
Now, if we could communicate with a person living in 4000 AD, what would he or she tell us that we would find impossible to believe? That genomic science extended the average life span to 200 years? That we would regularly communicate with beings on other planets? That we would use intelligent holographic “friends” as servants and entertainers? That the dominant transportation vehicle would be personal airmobiles powered by rechargeable hydrogen modules?
Of course, The Time Machine told a different story, in which the eloi were bred as food sources for the morlocks, long after the world as we know it had been destroyed by nuclear war. In the book, the time traveler (George in the 1960 movie) lands in the year 802,701, by which time we in 2010 would be regarded as the equivalent of cavemen. The movie is fascinating, and at the fifth or tenth viewing we still root for George to find his way back to Weena. Unfortunately, the grim future that H.G. Wells paints is at least as plausible as the tomorrow described in the previous paragraph. Mankind does have a way of botching things, even while he pushes technology ahead.
There is no record of Roman or Greek literature speculating on life 2000 years in the future. That’s too bad, because it would be interesting to read where Plato or Aristotle imagined mankind was heading. In their wildest dreams did they ever envision flying machines carrying hundreds of people across the oceans? In the night sky I see their flashing lights, just as I see the far off moon, and it all seems hard to believe, even today.
