This is The Future

How promising is "This is the future"

Each era has its own “this is the future” moment. Three words delivered like a prophecy; whispered by inventors, screamed by marketers, and announced in thousand launch events. “This is the future” is never a statement of fact. It is a performance, a persuasion, a psychological spell designed not just to inform, but to enlist.

We, humans, are captivated by direction. We want to know what comes next, we want a guide, a glimpse, or maybe a simple guarantee. And when someone; be it an entrepreneur, a CEO, a salesman; says “this is the future,” they are not merely selling us the latest product or service. They are offering certainty. They are selling the one little thing that has been a bestseller for years; HOPE.

Now more than ever; what sells is hope. It gives a temporal royalty. The chance to step ahead of the curve, the chance to beat time, and the chance to be among the chosen few who belong to the future.

I have come across a short video on Instagram about a salesman introducing the washing machine to the public. I like to believe that this scene from 1923 was the birth of modern persuasion. When the man in the scene said “this is the future,” he wasn’t just selling the washing machine, he was selling time, status, transformation, new roles, and new identities. And the woman who was looking at that glimmering object that promised to rearrange her life; perfectly reflects the emotional crossroad many people face when confronted with change. What happened in 1923 is a mirror that reflects all times. And that shimmering phrase “this is the future” is rarely a neutral one.

One phrase that has been said, and still being said, to sell us skin. To reinvent our motherhood, to redesign our love life, to make us question our bodies, our jobs, our faces, and our very own way of being alive. This is the future is an announcement that our current reality is no longer enough. And what must we become? More filtered, more optimized, more profitable. When companies or innovators introduce new technologies, they often frame them as the inevitable so that resisting them feels like resisting progress itself.

Image courtesy of neurosciencenews.com

This isn’t a rebellion against the future nor an unrealistic desire to return to the good old days. I adore innovation. Humans have all the right to embrace the new, to dance with technology, to choose the marvels of science. The danger lies not in the invention but in the blind seduction. In mistaking trends for truths . In outsourcing our worth to what’s next, simply because the world has told us that this sparkles. Inventions and the future have one thing in common; they are both a divine act. We have always invented; it is what we do as human when imagination meets material. Introducing new ways of living or creating new tools is never the real threat. It is the unexamined handover of the self.

It is in the moment we allow algorithms to tell us what we desire. When we no longer write, eat, dress, age, think, or dream without wondering first; “Will this make me belong to the future?”

We are endlessly seduced into abandoning the moment. But the truth is; life is never lived in the future.

“This is the future” can be thrilling, but we shall not be hypnotized. It is not always a promise. Sometimes, or worse, many times, it is a plea to conform, to follow, to change our essence, to vanish into someone else’s vision of what life should be. We owe it to ourselves to pause, to ask, to choose with intention. Because the time we belong to right now is not outdated; it is sacred. Whatever comes next should never take away our belonging to this very moment.

And the future, though dazzling, often forgets its vows.