What do you write when you have nothing to write about?
That's probably the question I may end up answering by the end of this post. Got nothing to do on a pretty enventless wednesday evening, during a break from work that I didn't need with an empty feeling that I don't like. With all these questions ringing in my head that I hate to think about. Why can't life have a fast forward button that we can just press and get the answers to these annoying little big questions.
Just on that thought, it would certainly be very cool to have something like that - a button that you could press to fast forward to the next significant moment in life. Like meeting a new person that is going to play a significant part in your life, or getting that job that you're going to love doing for the rest of your life (if at all something like that exists), or buying that dream home, or watching that movie that had a kickass impact on you (atleast for the next few weeks), or anything even remotely significant like that.
Imagine how cool will that be - we all come in to this world, spend the first 10 years in slow motion, dreading and hating everyday at school, actually doing all the homework ourselves in the evening!!! Then when you turn 10 or any such cut-off age limit (I am assuming that there would be laws about what is the legal age at which children are given their fast forward remote), in a much celebrated ceremony where all your friends and family are present - YOU ARE HANDED OVER THE FAST FORWARD REMOTE!!!!
You're so excited about the remote that you fast forward the rest of the night and jump straight to the zero hour at school where you flaunt it to all your friends who are younger than you - of course the older ones already have theirs and they have chosen to fast forward through the zero hour! Then you go into your first lecture, find it boring, fast forward to the nextat the start of that one, you go straight to the recess. Of course there is a learning curve here as well. You make frequent stops at first, at most things that seem important to you at first - you are curious to see how that chick that you have a crush on is going to look like tomorrow and if she is going to give you a smile at all, then probably to the moment where you embarass yourself by going upto her when she was around her friends - you would for sure fast forward a lot after you come back totally humiliated.
Its a bit fascinating to think back and map the kind of things in your life that you would stop to see and witness, at every stage of your life - the kind of things that take priority at such stages. I started the post with a small sample of things that I would be looking forward to at this moment. That list is of course not exhaustive but indicative. I also spoke of a few things that came to my mind when I thought of the highlights of one's school times. Even that list is indicative btw and not necessarily of my time at school...I do posess a very fertile imagination :-)
A few interesting issues that come to my mind, if such a gadget were to exist. A few random ones that I am jotting down here...
1) Would things be as exciting if this remote had a rewind button as well? I guess not, else some people would forever be young and would keep doing the same thing to the same people ever and ever again...you know the obsessive kinds :-) Imagine fast forwarding your entire life quickly to see if you are ever going to sleep with Scarlett Johansson right after watch 'Vicky Christina Barcelona' (though I wonder who would stop to watch it), and on realising that you won't, you can't go back back and be with any of the other women that you were with!!!!
2) The lack of a rewind button would also mean that you might never know what you've missed out on! You might get to a random day where you are feeling great or feeling absolutely terrible and you also know why - just that you weren't there to witness it. Now that could be really disappointing, really depressing or even ver very relieving, depending on what you've missed! I could go on to low level design and functional issues of the gadget at this point but would totally avoid that since I am just talking about a totally random concept that you're probably sick of and I am not :-)
3) No one would have that many friends on facebook! Everyone would know and be in touch with only the few truly important people in their lives, and at only the few events that are important to both of them.
4) What this might also mean is that there would be much less noise in each of our lives due to random characters that we can easily...well...fast forward! Much less stress and much less confusion. Though, this one assumes rationality and an upward sloping learning curve on part of human beings - an assumption that most significant economic theories stand on and the one that proves to be their most significant limitation :-)
5) You would end up spending a lot more time with your parents. If not yours, most of their significant stops would be around you - when you fell seriously , got your first report card, got expelled from school for the first time, when they found out about each of your vices :-) ...they would certainly stop at many more of those embarassing moments that you would rather fast forward!!!!
I can probably go on with these random implications (actually I can't...had to think hard to come with these ones except for the Scarlet Johansson example :-) ) but it would be interesting to build on this list through the comments section of this post...so go on and write a comment at least now guys!!!!
PS: Its a bit fortunate that we dont have such a gadget as yet, since I would have never stopped to write this post then :-)
-j
