Sunday 19 March 2000

Pic of the day: Not that Earth is all that bad, either, on days like this.

As I was walking home from the bus this evening, I saw the moon hang full in the sky, coloring yellow the thin haze it shone through. Suddenly it all made sense.

I had woken up this morning after restless and uncomfortable sleep, and I woke up hungry for sex. Not that waking up was a step in the right direction, in that regard. I have mentioned before that the full moon often tends to coincide with restlessness and horniness (for lack of a better word). Yet I did not recognize it until I actually saw the shiny orb hanging in the sky.

When I was a child, my attitude towards the moon was quite different. I read about the upcoming manned landings on the moon. Unlike most of my generation I did not actually watch the giant leap in July 69 on television, but I did hear the report on the radio. I was quite interested in astronomy as a boy, and this all happened while I was still a child. I studied maps of the moon with the various "oceans", or Mare as they were called. Night mares? To me they were dreams. I fully expected that I would go there one day, if nothing else I would come as a tourist along with thousands of others in the giant space ferries. I would try jumping in low gravity indoors in the giant bubbles that would cover some of the craters, or in the spacious caverns that were built for mining under the surface. And of course I would try walking outdoors in a space suit along with the other tourists, perhaps riding a moon buggy.

None of this came to pass. The space revolution did not come as expected. It came, but it was very different. Always before, when we found new territories, we dispersed. We invaded, occupied, and settled them. But when we entered space, we looked back and saw all the world hanging there as a shining blue ball, and on it all that humanity had ever been. The countries were not colored in political colors, but covered by the same threads of clouds. From then on, space has bound us ever tighter together. Right now, some of you may be reading my diary via a communications satelite.

So the space revolution did not come the way we expected. Nor did the flying car or the housekeeping robot. It is funny how the future never lives up to expectations. Then again, I guess we should be glad we got a future at all.

And instead we got the Internet revolution. Not quite as spectacular, admittedly. Talking - or rather typing - with people from all over the world is not quite like meeting them on the moon. But make no mistake, Internet is one of the Wonders of the World. Perhaps one of the greatest ever. Its potential is yet only in part revealed. Once it is fully exploited, the world will have changed beyond recognition. It will be like having a library, a university, and a mall in each home; not to mention a post office, but we're almost there already. Millions more will be able to work from home rather than commuting across increasingly crowded highways. People will still want to get out of their homes to get fresh air and to meet other people; but likely as not, it will be people who they already know from the local town.net ...

And when your descendants once finally colonize the moon, they will do so with an Internet Terminal in their pocket. Or perhaps not, because the future always comes while we are looking the other way.