I was talking to a friend of mine awhile ago and the conversation about how far technology has advanced in just the last ten or twenty years came up. I quickly came to the resolution that we are living in the future now. My friend didn't quite agree, but the thought still hung in my mind. I began to wonder, "What constitutes as the future and where does it stop?" In the technological sense of course. I began to think about the widely accepted vision of the future and the most common representation is of course the famous quote "One day there will be flying cars." This quote struck a question in my mind, then what? Let us say that one day everybody owns a flying car (which will likely never happen) then what is the next great technological leap forward for mankind?

Everyday I see how far this world has come and old videos and commercials only cement my thoughts further. Every time I see the old AT&T "You will" commercials from 1993, I'm amazed to see how far we've come and how the technology has even surpassed what we could have ever even dreamed of. To see the kid who is taking his school classes through a screen with a teacher in another country, in what would later become the Internet and a web cam. The mom having a video chat with her kid at a payphone which would become Skype or the i-phone. Even the kids ordering a movie on a flat-screen TV in what would later become Netflix. It really amazes me and excites me for what the future could hold.

Never-the-less, my question still remains. What is it about today that keeps people from believing that we are living in the future now? Is it simply the flying cars? We currently have machines that can cook whole meals in less than a minute, machines that let us play games and talk to people in other countries and interact instantaneously, we can send letters in seconds instead of days or weeks, and depending on the successful application of things like Sony's Move and Microsoft's Natal(Kinect) we're on the brink of controlling the virtual world with out controllers. Not to mention stuff like Nintendo's 3DS, which is bringing 3D (without glasses) to the world in a compact travel format, while at the same time Sony's TVs and consoles are trying to bring 3D mainstream. Given all of this remarkable technology, all that I ask the world is when can we say that the future has officially arrived? Is it only when we have flying cars? If not, then when?