Shouts From Down Under

Back ter yer fewcha, Australyans. What was I doing at 2 am?

When our grandkids sit on our knees, we'll soon be listening to them tell us what we did "when we were young". Technology is already way in our past.

From Robot Zippers to earth-shakes in your living room, us writers are going to have to be quick (zippy?) to ride any trend waves in the future. And I don't even want to think about Pacific Ocean sized "trends" caused by tectonic morning tonics thank you.



No. Tsunami's can be ignored 'til they happen. But can we ignore the future faster than it happens and envelopes us?

Oooops. Too late for the next couple of years already. Isn't it? The future is here folks.



http://mashable.com/2015/02/15/the-story-behind-zipperbot/

Mashable seems to be a website elbowing into my personal online viewing space lately, and perhaps the palate, the chewiness, the tactility of the word itself is ironically appropriate today.

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/02/16/14/05/australia-sits-on-the-most-act...

Now, there's this earthquake in Queensland that wasn't even on the news in Australia yet, and my wife dug me in the ribs and murmured half in her sleep that there'd been an earthquake at 2 am (a couple of hours ago but we were still in the dark) off the Queensland coast, and that it was on social media already. (Yep, she checks her phone and Facebook a lot when she can't sleep. Something I'd never do... )

And what do you know? There's already, in the blink of an eye, before the news mobs got hold of this event, someone had filmed (cough, something) and put it on YouTube. It's labelled 15th of Feb 2015, but how would they have known it would happen today, the 16th of Feb?
Obviously YouTube must go by the date in the USA, is the only explanation.



Still, it could be that future technology is already here, and has even overtaken our time line already! Yes, new inventions, newsflashes, who knows WHAT is already popping up, the event recorded in yesterdays date, yet hasn't even happened TODAY yet.

When we write stuff, we want it to be all, you know, high tech, cutting edge, trendsetting, and out there, don't we?
Yes, we want to be so Urbandictionaryish that we'll go to great lengths to find out the latest, and be ready to trumpet the most rad stuff, the most wicked, the most fully sick, the most hectic, the most cra cra, the most cool, the most burlesque (ok maybe not burlesque but still) gizmos and genre crackling literature the world has ever set its collective readerships' eyes on.

Trendy
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trendy

Fully Sick
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hectic

Next thing you know, editors will have to up the ante to even get work in their trade. They'll have to find a way to edit our stuff even before we've written it, just so they get first crack at finding that hidden talent, that J K Rowling-esque new author.

This, of course, can only mean one thing. Forget the Ukrainian / Russian conflict, Iran Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and every other skirmish around the place at the moment.
No, the up and coming fights will most likely be between editors, or authors who are trying to beat the future, trying to secure that next blockbuster and bestseller, that latest crazy magazine sales figure, that yes, THAT next viral YouTube clip.

But alas, it must can't be happening in the past / future just yet, because on looking it up on YouTube, expecting to already view next weeks stoush-

(Stoush- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stoush)

- between ambitious authors and endemic editors, grammar police valiantly trying to intervene but sadly unable to calm these scurrilous scribblers, even with threats of social media editorial exile, I realised with clear, crystaline, 100% transparent, spotlessly clean, invisible glass vision that this time is not yet. But it's not far off folks!

So we don't want to be a bunch of tweets! If the past and future would just remain linkedin, then we'd remain just slow moving, normal time warp, my space, linear grampas and granmas,

not futuristic insta-grams.

How could you facebooks that you read before you wrote the things?

If this "seeing into the future so fast it's done in our past" phenomena really took off, imagine the money that could be saved?

Jetstar wouldn't have bothered installing ashtrays into the A-320 like we flew on from Melbourne back to Taswegialand. No, I wouldn't have been able to snap these retro-ness pics while stumbling through the rear door past the smiling hostess, clutching the obligatory carry on "under 10 kilo" bag of sad, flattened belongings.




Sparky