My daughters are 10 and 12, entering the end years of elementary school. They have never known a world where Canadians weren't fighting a war in Afghanistan, where you could go through airport security and keep your shoes on, where Baghdad was a mystical place in Bugs Bunny cartoons, or where New York City included the World Trade Center towers.
But they also don't remember a world without iPods, cheap ubiquitous sushi in Vancouver, the International Space Station, mobile phones (and built-in GPS), Loonies and Toonies and Euros, cars with airbags and traction control, blogs, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Google Maps, a Wall-less Berlin, and TV stations with nothing but kids' programming.
The world is different than it was nine years ago, when I stumbled awake to stare at the television in our kitchen, terrified and numb, and later walked my older daughter Marina to preschool under a sky without airplanes. Is it worse? Is it better?
I don't know. Is it ever?
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Even though so much has radically changed, until I get the hovercar that I was promised was just around the corner at Expo86, I'll argue that the future is not yet here.
ps. Santa if you're reading this blog, I want a fully funtional holodeck too but I'll let you finish the hovercar first.
pps. A hovercar is completely different from a flying reindeer so don't be thinking you can fool me with that again.