The things that could have been.

Recently, I've been on a cleaning binge. The goal has been to lighten the load of 'stuff' that clutters my life. Endless boxes of books, DVDs, CDs, product manuals, extra cables and all the boxes and containers needed to store all that. It really is frightening how much of my life can be defined by the stuff I acquired at the time.The other day, I was looking through my books. Lots of old sci-fi and cyberpunk novels spanning the classics up through the early oughts. It's really amazing to me the number of these stories that have passed from 'possible future' to 'alternate reality' to 'today that could have been'. Guess the authors should have pushed the dates out a bit?Or should they? Lets look at the technologies in these stories: Artificial Intelligence, Cyber warfare, Virtual Reality. All of those are *real* today. Robots are entering the home. Cars are driving themselves. I can say 'hey, Siri!' and a voice activated personal attendant jumps up to see what I need. I have access to a global network of everything, anytime I want it. We have robots that are exploring the galaxy because our fleshy meat bag bodies can't handle it.We are living science fiction.For all the bullshit going on in the world...for all the evil and awfulness that I see everywhere, somehow this brings me some comfort. I can't exactly explain why, but it does.