I've been thinking about the future lately.

Specifically, five years from now. What will the world be like in five years? To do this, I had to think about the year 2000. How different was it back then?

Some things are pretty much the same. I work at the same place. My daily work week routine hasn't changed much in five years. I'm still in the same office room. I drive the same streets to get there. I make more money now. I'm a "Senior" now--I'm waiting until I get to graduate. But the difference at work in the last five years is really cosmetic. Different faces, I have a different haircut and a different car.

Back in early 2000, it was thought Vice President Gore was going to coast to a victory in November. How could an "incumbent" VP from a successful administration with a skyrocketing economy lose?

We're still wondering about that one.

So the country's been at war for over three years. Not the same war, but--wait, yes, it's all the same war, isn't it? The acid heads were right! Everything's connected. We're all one. And anything we're "fighting" against--even philosophically, we're at war with. All of us.

So there's a difference. We weren't actually at war with any country or organization five years ago.

There were cell phones five years ago, but I guess they're better now, right? You can play more games on them. You can message inane symbol messages to each other. You can take pictures if you want. Of course, we already had ways to do these things, but now we're all connected to Paris Hilton and her sidekick. Do you like your phone better now than in 2000?

We didn't have iPods back then. Or satellite radio. Do we like music more now or do we just like the new ways to play it? Or do we really hate commercial radio stations that much. I'd believe the latter, but I think it's a combination.

I probably have a few pairs of underwear that are five years old. And I definitely have old shirts and jeans. But even my new clothes I could have bought five years ago. There haven't been any great technological advances in clothing over the last five years.

Wither 2010?

Are we going to be going into space in larger numbers? Civilians on private spaceships? Will anyone we know personally be able to afford it?

Will my TV be bigger? Will my computer be smaller? Will I still be taking pictures with film? Will we still be at war? Will we have flying cars?

Change is almost always incremental. There are large jumps at times, but even those can be hard to see as they happen.

Ten years ago, the Internet was a baby compared to now. I think we've hit the teenage years of the Internet. We're used to it for a lot of things, but we don't quite trust it all the time. Sometimes it does things we don't like, but grounding isn't an option. At the same time, if the Internet was taken away, the speed of business would slow to a crawl. Information that took days getting from one place to another is now almost instant. We can't go back, even though everyone wants to tell the Internet it can't wear shorts to school anymore--how about a uniform Internet, people? Freedom with limits, right?

In thinking about all of these things, I realized I have no idea what five years from now will be like. Either for me or the country and world at large. But I do know what we should correct.

Everyone should throw their cell phones away. Why, you ask? Isn't it great to get in touch with people the second we want to? No, it isn't. And most people don't answer their cell phone when it rings. They just see who is calling and then turn it off. They'll call them back later--when they want to. Remember how annoying beepers were? Cell phones are worse. We've got all these new ways to communicate, and we're talking less than we did before.

While we're at it, let's cut back on the video games, too. Back in the 80s, people were worried because kids would spend a few hours a week playing video games at the mall. We should be out playing, riding bikes, exercising, they said--not standing around, pumping quarters into machines. Well, now kids aged 8 to 50 are sitting on their asses for hours a day playing games at home. So is that better? Sitting on the couch for hours rather than standing around video game parlors? That's progress.

Even Darth Vader, who, himself, was a creation of advanced technology, was heard to say, "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed."

And he was the bad guy.

Matt Worley isn't afraid of the future, but he's not jumping into bed with it either.