As I look into the future, I see radical changes in both how people 'attain beauty,' and how the world perceives beauty. In general, I believe traditional beauty will be less valuable - and more uniqueness will be heralded.
Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.
The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
I pledge allegiance to the living, and I will defend art from history. I will rescue art from the future, from its attrition into taste, and from the speculative notion that it will become more valuable with time.
If you default on your Visa bill, nobody comes to repossess your refrigerator or auction off your shoes. The biggest penalty you'll face is trouble getting future credit.
I don't want to be a grumpy old man or too pessimistic, because if I have a chance, I would prefer to watch a film in the cinema with an audience on a big screen instead of watching it on a cell phone. It's a very different experience, but somehow I think this form will have its own future and life.
Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.
In the digital future, texts will be annotated visually, animated and illustrated like never before. The austere 'prayer book' paper that permitted the space for Shepard's illustrations to Pepys' diaries is now being recreated in the digital era.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
I have said that gymnastics can be abusive and brutal. That was my experience. I felt trapped in a world where authority figures were dictating my future.
Looking ahead, future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keepon robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.
The world wants to know - is the future a democratic one or an autocratic one? And I want to make sure that the United States leads on that, clearly that it's democratic.
The 'Star Trek' future, to me, is where we are headed. Everything is automated, and we are free to pursue our dreams. We are free to pursue lives that aren't about working and toiling away in dangerous jobs. For example, how many of us would love to be poets, or how many of us would love to be artists?
In the future, you'll simply jump into your car, turn on the Internet, turn on a movie and sit back and relax and turn on the automatic pilot, and the car will drive itself.
The way you deal with automation is by upgrading people's skills so they can get the jobs of the future.
Consider one possible future that could occur soon, where autonomous trucks travel highways with a human 'monitor' in the cab who can assist with particularly challenging driving like navigating city centres and ensure goods are delivered safely.
I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success.
It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available - more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don't have to run into the future in order to get more.
People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.
