Current me, bringing news of the future to myself in, say, the mid ’90s: I have terrible news for you, Past Self. When you get older, you’ll lose some detail vision.
Past me, a sweet summer child: Oh no! Am I going to be blind? Am I going to need even bigger glasses?
Future news: Nah, it’s fine, they’re making thinner lenses all the time. Plus progressives will come out so by the time you need bifocals, you won’t even have a line across your eyes. You’ll be able to read just fine, but you won’t be able to count the fingers in a group photo.
Past me: That’s fine. Why would anyone care about counting–
Future news: As you get older, there will be more and more self-checkouts where you swipe your card yourself to pay.
Past me: That doesn’t sound so bad…
Future news: Each brand is just slightly different and they’re always a solid, dark color so none of your tricks will work, and it’ll be hard to see exactly where and which angle to swipe your card, so every time you try to pay, it takes you just a little bit longer than everyone else, and a cashier sighs at you.
Past me: That’s really annoying.
Future news: And in the future, AI art exists so whenever you see literally any image, you can never tell if the details are a bit hard to make out, just like the details on literally every thing in the real world, or if the entire thing’s fake. The entire internet is AI fakeout images now, and there’s no way to tell. Ever.
