THE FUTURISTS AND 2016

As a futurist, that is, one who is absorbed by science fiction and what will happen in the future, I see the year of 2016 as a pivotal year of past predictions coming to fruition.

First, VR, Virtual Reality, hit the consumer market in a small but profound way. It's a first step. VR was seen as a future reality long before I was born and brought to the public eye with Gene Roddenberry's Hollideck in Star Trek's Next Generation.

Second, Aritificial Intelligence. 2016 brought AI to the forefront explicitly in the new F-35 fighter jet. That was projected as the future of warfare on the TV series Buck Rogers as the fighters were placed on automatic pilot to fight the enemy spacecraft, not too intelligently in the eyes of Buck. It's this feature that is holding the aircraft up in production, by the way.

Third, politics. As seen by the god of sci-fi, Isaac Asimov back in the seventies in the Foundation series, the earth is changing political views worldwide. And, there are always the bad guys out there to play villian, in our case, the Muslims, not too surprisingly as my buddy Jim Haley points out in his book, Shores of Tripoli, that they have always been a pain in the ass throughout history.

I could go on, but the question remains: Have we progressed? The answer is, yes and no. Progress never happens without demolishing the lives of some, rewarding others, and changing everyone unfairly in subjective controversy.

Delta. The symbol of change. I think of it every day. What will be the force of delta today?

I call it the Delta Universe. Constant change.