I often think about what it would be like for teenage Ryan to be transported 25 or 30 years into the future… as you do. What aspects of culture or technology would surprise him the most?
The two things I come back to over and over again are tattoos and FaceTime.
Tattoos
I don’t even know how to explain to my children just how much of a taboo tattoos were when I was their age. Teachers, parents, adult authorities basically looked down upon tattoos (and piercings to a lesser extent) as a death sentence.
“Nobody is ever going to hire you if you’ve got arms full of tattoos and your head full of holes,” they’d say.
I am genuinely and pleasantly surprised just how wrong they were. Even many of the most conservative people I know seem to be generally accepting of tattoos. It’s legitimately surprising.
TBH I’d love to see a good documentary on the normalization of tattoos.
It almost doesn’t make sense.
FaceTime
Global. Instantaneous. Free. Video calling.
We completely take it for granted that we can have a video call with anyone in the world, for free!
As a teenager, a future with video calling seemed plausible. That it would be high fidelity and instantaneous, also seemed plausible but maybe more of a stretch goal.
The fact that it’s totally free I think would blow my mind.
When AT&T said they would bring us the future, IMHO there was a strong implication that we’d have to pay (a lot more) for it.
I’m looking forward to finding out what my children’s equivalents to these are. Cyberware and space travel? Who knows.