By Slanted Light

The lavender smelled lovely... and there was roses too! That smelled! It was a separate little garden, and there were other flowers too, but the roses were lovely. I'd be very surprised if there weren't rose farms somewhere though - all those red ones have to come from somewhere (okay, it's probably Kenya, isn't it - and they've probably taken the smell out...)

Yes! to imaginings like that! I've been thinking that just about the Victorians, because they were actually so very very like us already in so many ways - right down to advertising and all sorts. They imagined telephones - but could they imagine telephones without wires? And mobile phones? And mobile phones connected to the internet? And the internet to start with? Back when I'm not even sure how many sets of encyclopaedia were around? Or books in general, even... Go back to more people than not being unable to read and write - that's a completely different view of the world even there...

I dunno though - I reckon the reason we can't really imagine the future isn't because it's so amazingly different (though of course it is) but because each big change is made up of so so many tiny little steps and changes. And we have to get used to things before we can start thinking about the possibility of changing them... I wonder if there's only so far we can go with our imaginations (blasphemy!) in some things - what does science fiction imagine now? Mostly, I think, the same thing it's been imagining since SF started. Something, somewhere has to spark off an idea that we've not had yet, based on our acceptance and understanding of what we already have - and we might have to wait until some of the ideas we have had catch up to the acceptance-of-normal in our brains, before we can make the next jump... Or maybe it's just me that lacks imagination. *g*