The genre of science-fiction taught us that the future was going to bring new forms of human communication and interaction; video, holographic projection [provided only by your own personal R2 unit] and of course being 'beamed' to various locations (efficient modes of transport) are the most common examples of what the future would be like. In elementary school I used to always sit around with friends and calculate my age when the new century would begin, "Oh I will be 23 years old in the year 2000 and I will fly around with a rocket booster and talk to my friends through the television!" This isn't quite how things worked out, I have no rocket booster, have no flying car (nor any car) and well, my television hardly renders basic cable (but then again HDTV is fairly impressive, just not in my price range). However, from time to time I am confronted with the reality that we have, in many ways, reached these milestones and even surpassed certain expectations with current technologies. They have managed to comfortably integrate themselves into our lifestyles (this of course can be argued on many levels), and well I almost didn't notice the change, at least not in the way we thought we might notice, or be affected by it. A large bomb was not dropped on my head containing space suits, rocket powered roller-skates and floating skateboards.

I use applications, like iChat, religiously. It is how I communicate with many of my peers, family and sometimes pets. On occasion video chats take place and I am sometimes forced to say to myself, "Holy shit, this is amazing! I am freakin' talking to someone through my screen in real time!" I had one of these moments recently, when a furry-faced man magically appeared in front of me.



Christmas is upon us and I do believe I need an iSight. I am not so sure of my comfort level with allowing everyone to see myself hunched over a laptop most of the time, and I don't know that anyone wants to see me picking my nose in a sea of empty bottles of Terrible. Then again, I can eliminate things like emoticons and mispelled words from all my drunken chats – saving my precious fingers for nose-picking and making shadow puppets.