The world changes faster than we can keep up with it nowadays. The newspapers and television bulletins are full of new technologies and exciting developments that will enhance our already over-enhanced lives even further. The message is all around us: 'Coming soon, the intrusion of computers into every aspect of your life!' We'll get it all: micro-chipped shoes that monitor your health; cars that drive themselves; virtual reality sex; Japanese cyberpet companions that tidy the house; and cloned babies grown outside the womb. These are all aspects of the brave new future we can look forward to, and how reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's predictions some of them are.

The media is not only telling us that this WILL be the future, but also that we WILL like it, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Of course we need all these amazing innovations to improve our lives, don't we? Forget poverty, forget starvation, forget environmental damage, forget incurable strains of TB, forget political oppression--what we really need to improve the world are more video-screen mobile phones and automated robot lawn-mowers.

It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of new technology bearing down upon us. Publications like Wired magazine are like desperate surfer dudes trying to cling to the edge of this particular wave, before it crashes onto western society. But what if I'm not overwhelmed by it? What if I prefer human interaction and company to spending hours alone on the Internet? What if I still prefer browsing in an actual bookshop, savouring the feel and smell of new books, to the sterile point-and-click purchasing experience of shopping with amazon.com?

Mobile phones have become a craze, a necessity here in Britain, and are a fine example of technology taking over. Many people I meet simply cannot understand how I manage to exist satisfactorily without one. "What???" I can see them thinking, "You don't have a mobile? Not even a pager? Next you'll be telling us you don't have email…" Of course I have email and I find it very convenient--but it doesn't take the place, for me, of actually speaking to someone on the phone or face-to-face. Yet we may be spawning a generation of people who are incapable of communicating outside of email. Douglas Coupland recently admitted that he feels more comfortable using email than the telephone, and I am sure that he is only the first of many.

In Britain, mobile phones have undergone a huge cultural shift. The use of them in public and the irritations it causes are no longer a social stigma--instead, that stigma has rapidly shifted to non-ownership. Now, you bank, shop and surf the net through your phone. This is an age where even eleven-year-olds may be on their third mobile phone. To many people, not owning one seems like the deepest heresy, and society is becoming increasingly aligned toward their use. You can buy them in supermarkets and stations, their coverage extends nationwide, and transmitter masts are built everywhere, even on what was supposedly 'protected land.'

But I don't own one and I don't want to, and wearing the emperor's new clothes never felt so good. It is immensely satisfying to wonder whether every time a phone goes off in a cinema or a restaurant if it is slightly microwaving the user's brain. I'm not against progress and technology and change--but I am against the blind rush ahead without regard to consequences that seems likely to happen.

We should all be worrying about the consequences of the future as the scientists envision it. Their version of human existence looks pretty bleak. Apparently, our lives will become increasingly organised and solitary. We will hardly have to do anything for ourselves and we'll never need to leave the house. We'll never need to visit shops or doctors or banks, it will all be done for us. We won't need to remember people's birthdays because our mobile phone will notice that it is grandma's birthday and send her a card and flowers for us. Everything and anything we need will be delivered to our door by the army of delivery trucks clogging up the highways.

I don't believe that I am alone in finding the future unappealing if I am to be constantly nannied by the electronic devices that monitor my daily existence. The convenience of all these gadgets is beyond doubt--but what on earth are we all going to do with all the free time this should generate? Surf the net? Talk to the curtains? Commune with our cyberpet and clean up its cyberpoop? Surely not even spend more time with one another?

I am disillusioned with constant future predictions, and being told by people how I will do things and how much I will like it. They are projecting their future fantasies onto the rest of society, and some of these innovators, these scientists, seem to have only the most tenuous grip on reality. They really do need to get out more.

Luckily, of course, the future never turns out exactly as people predict it. That will save us. So bring on the cyberpets, bring on microchips in everything we wear and use, bring on this crazy new world with its electronic Big Brother watching and controlling every aspect of our lives. Let's see it happen. Because I have confidence in the human race to distort the way that we use things and reject what we don't want.

Me, I'm starting a 'Real Life' movement, for when people finally throw out their mobile phones and laptops and want to get back to reality. I'm planning workout routines for couch potatoes, detox clinics for net junkies, and human communication lessons for all these people emerging for the first time off-line from their houses and offices into the bright new world waiting outside. There will be real shops to go into and touch stuff, and other people to interact with face to face. Steady, now--it might be shock but we can do it.

Alright, laugh if you want to--but the future? It's closer than you think.

Copyright © 2000 George Olden All Rights Reserved

George Olden is a writer and occasional computer user working in Cornwall, England. He is the editor of www.hackwriters.com, a new website devoted to good writing, and is a student of Professional Writing at Falmouth College of Art.