Have you noticed that your days are flying by quickly? It will be 2020 one day and what will that year be like for those of us living?

Rin Tin Tin

My humble yeoman’s guess is tin will be depleted in the global supply and hopefully the companies producing touch screens will have found an alternative that is both lucrative and practical.  It has been embarrassing that our U.S. journalism media outlets have not made more of a stink of the “blood diamond” type of material tin really is.  Everyone is so addicted to “swiping” and pushing these devices to their energy-draining babies and children that we’ve remained blissfully ignorant of how there are other humans dying and suffering to mine this resource that will one day be exhausted.     It will be an involuntary humanitarian success if we can literally clean our hands of where and how that tin material came about.

For your own research I have provided the following links via a google search:

• http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/nov/23/tin-mining-indonesia-bangka
• http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-08-23/the-deadly-tin-inside-your-ipad
• http://press.ihs.com/press-release/design-supply-chain-media/itos-dominance-touch-screens-challenged-alternative-technolo
• http://www.todaysiphone.com/2013/07/indium-tin-oxide-what-makes-touchscreens-touch-sensitive-is-almost-gone/

The Princess Bubble

The years before September 11, 2001 had their burst bubbles like the “dot.com bubble” and in following years like the “mortgage bubble” and so forth.  I believe 2020 will bring about a whole new bursting that will make the millennial’s coming-of-age seem like a spa day.

In an endearing effort to help cushion our children from the horrific realities of fanatics, terrorists and frankly mentally ill people who take others lives and properties without remorse–we enjoying playing and paying into the princess factor (and most recently Star Wars fever) and our only dialogue with our children can become a nonstop obsession into those fairy tales of doting on the princess, et cetera.

Let me be clear that I don’t think it’s wrong to let our children have these fun roles to play and toys as such.  I would be a hypocrite myself as my husband and I discern how far to take child entertainment with our own progenies.  It becomes a disservice, however, when our children become teenagers and we’re not talking to them about real life.  Just trying to secure them a good college education, distinguish a career path and “keep them out of trouble” is not going to cut it.

In 2020 many “princesses” will come of age and look around the world and realize that their daydreams went a little too far like “Alice in Wonderland” when growing up.  Disillusionment may set in and it could take them some troublesome years through their twenties trying to figure out how they should operate in the 2020 world of political disarray, wars of a cyber-kind and no way to “let it go”.

Tarnished Touchscreens

Every time I hear “a recent study shows that…” I realize that we all are living subjects of the next “study” to be done in future years.

• Studies will show that children growing up with too much touchscreen time will have an even greater level of impatience than the guy trying to side-swap you today when merging onto the interstate.
• Studies will show that overuse of touchscreens helped in human de-evolution when it comes to reading certain social cues in people’s facial expressions, voice tone and body language in general.
• Studies will show that we had no idea how much radiation was too much or too little when interacting with these touchscreens.
• Studies will show that many adults recall their early emotional memories (either positive or traumatic) involve some dark rectangular object with a piece of an apple being bitten out in a shiny circle.
• Studies will show that many children assume that the clouds in the sky really do hold their family photos and verbal vomit of their strung-out parents.

5 More Years

Is there anything to be done about the next five years? Without hitting the mid-century mark in my age group, I’ve learned that it is much easier to tackle major projects with minor changes–albeit diligent ones. Here’s a few ideas that would help evoke healthy progress for our human population if applied en masse:

1. Forget about resolving the “climate change” debate. It’s happening, it’s been happening since before we had the history or ability to track the weather data. I’m over the arguing about it just like when you hear two toddlers going at it over a simple toy.  What we need to do are the little things to help make the big changes come to fruition:
2. Minimize. I’m not talking about your “Microsoft windows”. We must try to minimize our “stuff”. It can reduce stress, waste and budget expense. When we see trash outside, pick it up! When dealing with our own household garbage, let’s do it responsibly (reduce, re-use, recycle).  Try to change the producer-consumer balance.  How embarrassing will it be when the future historians write that during the times we fought about whether or not humans were affecting the earth’s environment adversely our consumer product companies continued to come up with new convenient and wasteful items like K-cups and baby food squeezes (full disclosure: I am guilty of being the consumer gobbling up these very products and I am not proud of it).
3. Hope. May we still have hope that we will figure out how to love God/Creator/Creation and each other regardless of what year we’re living in.

R.V.S.B.