The Light of Other Days

Would anyone in the year 1914 believe what technology advances would mean to how life is being lived here in 2014?  I don't think even the most visionary of them would ever imagine the things we take for granted today.

But I will offer up one visionary who may have well predicted our lives in another hundred years from today - Arthur C. Clarke, the co-author of 2001, A Space Odyssey and Renaissance Man extraordinaire. In my opinion, his greatest prophecy came in 2000 with the publication of The Light Of Other Days, a novel based on his synopsis. This book has haunted me since I first read it almost fourteen years ago.

The premise is oh-so-believable: just as we are able to see light that emanated from planets millions of years ago and capture television images that were transmitted at the speed of light, technology at some future date has advanced to the ability to detect  light waves from the past and create a "time viewer" where people and events from any point throughout time can be viewed.

Just think of how this technology would change life on Earth! Personal privacy and embarrassing secrets would not exist. Crime would not occur or at least false imprisonment would be extinct. No need for lawyers to argue for clients - just view the event as it happened and learn the truth. History books would be rewritten. Great mysteries would be solved. Accepted religions would be questioned. The source of the Bible would be discovered. The life and teachings of Jesus (immaculate birth?) would be explored. Even how life on Earth came to be would become known.

Scary huh? But would this technology be any more amazing than what we experience everyday in 2014?

;-)