Futurist?

Maybe I've been wrong all this time. I tend to concentrate in one area, but trust me, if you ask anyone, they will tell you that I am a Jack-of-all-trades (and perhaps a master of one or two… or maybe none. Who knows?). Perhaps it is the mindset we have here in the south; we don't need generalists, we need specialists. It is a conundrum for me, to possess all these skills yet having to live one skill at a time.

For most of my adult life, I have simply wanted to be a science educator, and for the past six years have actually been doing it professionally, in one form or another. Yet the gravitational tug of being multifaceted remains. I have done a lot. I still do.

However, in looking over my interests, one thing is becoming clearer. I have faith in the future and humanities abilities. I am a technologist; I believe that technology can cure many of society's ills. Yes, it can worsen them, but, when properly applied, it can be wondrous. I'm a computerist and a netizen. Look at all the computers I own, and how all of them, even the oldest one, can access the Internet. It is the digital marketplace, the electronic commons. Again, it has faults (the heartbreaking proliferation of online porn and numerous scams comes immediately to mind), but it can shape, and indeed is shaping, our culture. I'm also a spacefarer. My interest in astronomy actually grew out of my interest in space travel. In my mind, they are and forever will be linked. Astronomy is cartography, space travel is seafaring. We need to know where we're going if we are to arrive there.

All of this underlines something I've never considered, an aspect of me that is really starting to manifest itself as I enter my fifth decade in the cosmos. I am a futurist. I believe and am thoroughly convinced that our species will survive, thrive and more than likely move out to the stars, perhaps even colonizing our entire galaxy in time. We're still children, we're still young and growing. But I believe that if left to dream large dreams and do those things in a grandiose style, we will indeed be children of the stars.

I am a futurist.